HomeRETAIL typically does 40 percent of all sales in the holiday season and going green could net black ink for companies.
Buying online can be sustainable in the sense that catalogs are not printed and personal gasoline is not burned driving from store to store.
Even the items can be sustainable.
ToGoWare.com offers metal lunch carriers and bamboo cutlery to cut down on the hordes of throw-away plastic forks, knives and spoons tossed each day.
Reuseable bags.com offers metal and Pyrex straws as well as the usual plethora of grocery bags.
Don’t forget Beyondbags.com, reusable produce bags designed in Highlands Ranch. 
Then there is a movement to stop Black Friday in its standing in line tracks and get those shoppers, and their dollars, into local tills.
The Mile High Business Alliance is also focusing on mom-and-pop stores with a buy local push. The alliance said that Coloradans spent $12.7 billion during the holidays. The group hopes to move part of that money into a local economy.
“Where we spend money really does matter,” said Mickki Langston, director of Mile High Business Alliance. “The $100 spent at Target or the mall is different from $100 spent at Tattered Cover.”
That $100 will circulate at least three times in the local economy, Langston said. Local businesses employ local people, tend to shop other local businesses and pay taxes companies based elsewhere might not pay.
“Local businesses help us build a sustainable, resilient local economy,” Langston said.
Supporting a small business in town is not necessarily saying no to the big box world.
The alliance is saying buy local first.
“Buying local first isn’t anti-big business or anti-somewhere else,” Langston said. “Its about having what your community needs, and sustaining the people and resources on the planet.”
The Mile High Business Alliance will kick off Buy Local Week with a party and concert at 6 p.m., Nov. 28 at Swallow Hill Music Association, 71 E. Yale Ave., Denver. The concert starts at 8 p.m. with Chris Daniels and Cliff Eberhardt. (highland ranch herald/271109)