Author Name:
Diane Osgood, Ph.D.
Book Title:
Your Shopping Superpower: Follow Your Values and Better Your World One Purchase at a Time
Website URL:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Your-Shopping-Superpower/Diane-Osgood/9780757325267
https://www.dianeosgood.com/books
Link to book page on Amazon:
Social Media Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/diane-osgood/
What is your book about?
Discover how to align your shopping with your values.
Our shopping choices impact our health, our communities, the environment, and the economy in profound ways. Chances are you don’t want your family exposed to harmful chemicals, your clothes stitched by slaves, or your food adding to climate change. Yet many shopping choices led to these unintended outcomes. Your Shopping Superpower gives you a comprehensive guidebook to help you adopt positive, sustainable shopping practices that can have a real impact on how companies produce and sell products.
Learn to make informed choices about food, fashion, personal care items, household brands, and unique gifts that add up to make a big enough difference. With inspiring stories, tips, and tools, Your Shopping Superpower guides you to:
- Implement one easy change per week.
- Reduce environmental damage and labor exploitation.
- Stop buying toxic products.
- Detect greenwashing and misleading marketing.
- Identify trustworthy certifications, apps, and rating systems.
- Enable local, women-owned, veteran-owned, and minority-owned businesses to thrive.
- Keep costs down.
By shopping with your values, you can help change the economy so that more people have better jobs, the environment is restored, communities thrive, and your family stays safe and healthy. These shopping choices will also foster your own happiness.
To enact practical change, start deliberately, one purchase at a time.
What inspired you to write your book?
I discovered my shopping superpowers unexpectedly, while studying wild orangutans in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Watching the tropical forest get cut down day by day, I realized that if consumers refused to buy products made from tropical wood, demand would dry up and so deforestation would stop. That’s a bit simplistic, but it fueled my passion to earn a Ph.D. in Environmental Economics at the London School of Economics and become an authority on sustainable and ethical products.
I was inspired to write my book to share the tips and tools I’ve learned over the decades to making more sustainable and ethical shopping choices. For more than 30 years, I’ve helped companies create products that are better for people, for the planet, and for businesses. I collaborated to design verification systems for certifications and reporting standards that millions of shoppers rely on today.
If you have a business related to your book, tell us about it:
My consultancy, Osgood Consulting, prepares companies to face climate change and human rights challenges.
What is a typical day like for you?
I join a virtual writing group most mornings at 6.45am local time. After breakfast and on good days a work out, I focus on client work for the remainder of the day. I schedule reading time into my days, usually as a break after lunch.
What do you most enjoy about what you do?
I love helping individuals realize their power as consumers.
What are some favorite books you’d recommend to our readers?
This is Strategy by Seth Godin
Bread Pudding in Barcelona by Cindy Villanueva. A smart romance for women over 50. Easy read, great dialogue. A real treat!
What advice do you have to offer our readers?
Keep writing, drip by drip you’ll produce good work.
What would people be surprised to learn about you?
I am dyslexic and thus hate word games, especially Scrabble.
What’s next for you?
Launching my book on April 22, 2025. All of my energy is focused on a successful launch and supporting readers to find their shopping superpower.
Did you know we’ve hosted an annual Nonfiction Writers Conference since 2010? We deliver the traditional writers’ conference experience entirely online so participants from around the globe can attend. Join us for our next event!
