Sorry to hit two places with this post.
Jul. 23rd, 2013 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynThe other one's on Tumblr. Thought folks might be interested, at least if they used smartphones.
Those of you who're in the US, who're using either Android phones or iPhones, and who want to know what causes or political candidates the brands of products you buy may be supporting- if you don't know about it already, you may find an app that's been out since June or so of interest.
It's called Buycott.
It lets you use your phone's camera to scan the UPC bar code of a product, whether it's food or drink or clothing or paper or quite a lot of other things, and consults a database of information to determine what the product is, what company makes the product, what that company's parent company may be, and whether or not that company is flagged in any of its user-created campaign lists. The campaigns come in both 'avoid this company and its products' and 'support this company and its products' varieties.
By way of example, I signed up for a Buycott account (you have to sign up in order to use the app; you can do it with your email address or with Facebook, so if you're unhappy about privacy concerns, consider getting a fake email address somewhere and using that), installed the app, and joined several campaigns. I did my best to scan the bar codes on every product I considered buying that day. The app pointed out that the vitamins I was considering buying were a Bayer product, and that Bayer was a member of the European Chemical Industries Council, actively lobbying against climate legislation. A cordless phone I looked at turned up a notification that the manufacturer supported Scott Walker's election campaign in Wisconsin, and scanning a roll of Georgia Pacific-manufactured toilet paper warned that the brand was a Koch Brothers company, which I wanted to avoid too. On the positive side, scanning a Novara bicycle jacket UPC in REI came back with notification that the company had donated money to efforts to overturn DOMA, and scanning a can of soda at the local CVS indicated that the company actively supported unionized labor. Things like that.
Not every company out there is listed on Buycott, and not every cause that people support or object to is noted, but there's a lot more information there about the products we pay money for and the things that money goes to support than I think most of us normally have access to. Heck, whether you're supporting the parent company or not might not even matter- sometimes you don't even know what company the product you're buying is ultimately made by. Ben and Jerry's belongs to Unilever these days, and Tom's of Maine may have started off small and homegrown but it was part of the Colgate-Palmolive corporate family the last time I checked. Give it a look. See if there's anything there you might be interested in, whether it's to avoid buying something, or to actively buy one brand over another, or just to find out who you're buying from in the first place.
Buycott.com
The Android app
The Apple app
Forbes testing the app out
Greenbiz.com's article on the app
Those of you who're in the US, who're using either Android phones or iPhones, and who want to know what causes or political candidates the brands of products you buy may be supporting- if you don't know about it already, you may find an app that's been out since June or so of interest.
It's called Buycott.
It lets you use your phone's camera to scan the UPC bar code of a product, whether it's food or drink or clothing or paper or quite a lot of other things, and consults a database of information to determine what the product is, what company makes the product, what that company's parent company may be, and whether or not that company is flagged in any of its user-created campaign lists. The campaigns come in both 'avoid this company and its products' and 'support this company and its products' varieties.
By way of example, I signed up for a Buycott account (you have to sign up in order to use the app; you can do it with your email address or with Facebook, so if you're unhappy about privacy concerns, consider getting a fake email address somewhere and using that), installed the app, and joined several campaigns. I did my best to scan the bar codes on every product I considered buying that day. The app pointed out that the vitamins I was considering buying were a Bayer product, and that Bayer was a member of the European Chemical Industries Council, actively lobbying against climate legislation. A cordless phone I looked at turned up a notification that the manufacturer supported Scott Walker's election campaign in Wisconsin, and scanning a roll of Georgia Pacific-manufactured toilet paper warned that the brand was a Koch Brothers company, which I wanted to avoid too. On the positive side, scanning a Novara bicycle jacket UPC in REI came back with notification that the company had donated money to efforts to overturn DOMA, and scanning a can of soda at the local CVS indicated that the company actively supported unionized labor. Things like that.
Not every company out there is listed on Buycott, and not every cause that people support or object to is noted, but there's a lot more information there about the products we pay money for and the things that money goes to support than I think most of us normally have access to. Heck, whether you're supporting the parent company or not might not even matter- sometimes you don't even know what company the product you're buying is ultimately made by. Ben and Jerry's belongs to Unilever these days, and Tom's of Maine may have started off small and homegrown but it was part of the Colgate-Palmolive corporate family the last time I checked. Give it a look. See if there's anything there you might be interested in, whether it's to avoid buying something, or to actively buy one brand over another, or just to find out who you're buying from in the first place.
Buycott.com
The Android app
The Apple app
Forbes testing the app out
Greenbiz.com's article on the app
no subject
Date: 2013-07-24 02:19 am (UTC)... I wonder what happens when you scan a smartphone with it.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-24 02:27 am (UTC)On the other hand a search on the smartphone manufacturer at the actual Buycott website turns up no current 'don't buy this' status for any of the different Samsung sub-companies listed there, and one 'Support companies that donated to Hurricane Sandy relief' campaign in favor of Samsung Electronics, so I suppose if you did manage to scan my smartphone you'd get a note about 'it's okay, you like these guys'.
Sorry I couldn't get you more meta than that.