I found it kind of amusing and kind of sad when I saw, on our recent trip, baskets of seashells in the shops marked made in the Philippines and Taiwan. While these were beautiful shells we were in a beach community … why would we buy shells from across the globe? We tried finding our own shells on the beach but only found small ones. I’m sure though that if we had looked harder (SPF: and longer, in remote places) we would have found some good ones. Or we could have supported the guy down the road from our house and bought some that he had collected. The point is, if you are going to buy souvenirs, by ones that are from the area or art made in the area like the wall art we bought made from a local artist. Doing so means that local businesses can continue to thrive (which makes for a nice downtown to walk through as opposed to a boarded up one) and of course you also reduce the amount of emissions produced to deliver these souvenirs.
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This is the mantra we lived by on our South East Asia trip. We always bought from the local people and not the big stores. That even included food and clothes. I like meeting the local people and hearing their story and where they are from. It is so much more rewarding.