I stumbled across Locallectual today - a site that aims to help us figure out where stuff is produced and more importantly, help us find local stuff that we like.

According to the site’s founders:

We’re forward thinking, we’re smart, and we’re tired of being disappointed by country of origin labels. We know that there’s power in what we buy, and we’re looking to harness that influence to benefit local economies—and more importantly, the planet.

We believe it’s important to be knowledgeable about the origin of the products we buy as well as the practices of manufacturers. We believe companies should do their best to forge beneficial relationships with their workers, their communities, and the globe, while producing quality goods.

Sounds great. I support these ideas 100%.

I think the site may be new as content isn’t in abundance but they are certainly onto something cool and clearly understand a little about social networking and community building.

On a related note, in Canada yesterday, the Prime Minister Harper announced stricter (but not strict enough in my opinion) definitions for the ‘Made in Canada’ label. Under under current Canadian law, if 51 per cent of the production costs were incurred in Canada and the last substantial transformation of the product occurred in Canada, it is legal to use those labels. So the move by PM Harper was in the right direction, just not a big enough step.