Why I shop online - sometimes

I am a huge fan of shopping locally and when I can or am aware of products made or sold locally, I will choose to purchase them, if I believe them to be affordable for me. Case in point: I recently needed a glass straw – that’s a whole other blog post, maybe for next time. Amazon had a large selection of straws, mostly in packs of 7 or 8 for about $15-$20, made overseas somewhere. I chose to buy a straw hand-blown in Vancouver and sold at a small retailer in Fort Langley for $7. I actually saved money since I didn’t need more than one.
However, when shopping for items that I am ingesting or putting on my body, I’ve become a little picky. I actually want to know what it is I am putting in or on my body. And it seems much of the ingredients listed in these types of products are foreign to me. So what I like about shopping online is the ability to search the ingredients and find out more about them. For example, I was just considering purchasing a Lavender Bath and Shower Gel from Young Living and noticed some chemically looking ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce. I searched them up and satisfied myself that they were harmless, necessary for the product to be effective and in some cases, even plant-derived. If I had been standing in a store, I may have made assumptions about the length of their names and difficulty in pronunciation and determined that they weren’t safe ingredients.
Now if I could find a similar product made in Southwestern BC or even the Pacific Northwest US and sold in a local store, I might be interested. But I also don’t love the time-consuming nature of seeking such a product out. In writing this post, I decided to try to find out where Young Living makes its bath products. I’m still searching for that answer but I did find this little nugget of information:
“The terms of the Young Living Supplier Code of Conduct specifically requires all suppliers and/or subcontractors to verify/certify that no raw materials, finished product, etc. purchased by Young Living has been manufactured, assembled, and packaged through the direct or indirect use of forced labor, bonded labor, child labor, or unsafe working conditions.”
                                          - youngliving.com/en_us/company/code-of-ethics
So that makes me happy, since my biggest concerns with overseas manufacturing is the treatment of the workers and potential lack of oversight in ingredient purity.
What information or factors are important to you in choosing the products you purchase?