Use Buycott to support what you care about
We all know that an important part of Green Living is choosing eco friendly, sustainable products.
By doing so, we ‘vote with our wallets’ to encourage manufacturers to be more responsible.
But sometimes it’s difficult to know what you’re buying, especially with food for example – we don’t always know who owns the brand that we’re about to buy.
A new phone app called Buycott aims to solve this problem.
Buycott – What Does it Do?
Scan the barcode of a common product, and the app will show you its corporate “family tree” on the phone screen.
That means you can avoid buying products from companies you dislike.
Even better, Buycott lets you join – or create your own – campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles.
Suppose, for example, you wanted mandatory labelling of food containing GMOs in the USA. An existing campaign on Buycott (called Demand GMO Labelling) tells you if a product you scan was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labelling of genetically modified food.
It’s not all about NOT buying stuff – you can also look for products made by companies you like. You can join (or create your own) campaigns to support companies which support LGBT rights or are cruelty-free for example.
Buycott – What I like
- I view Buycott as a way of making a more informed purchasing decision.
- I like that it doesn’t push any specific viewpoint – you simply look for what you want to support or avoid.
- The app is currently free of charge
Buycott Problems
- The app has had some teething problems. Traffic has been so heavy since its launch that response times are very slow. (Buycott say they’re working on this).
- I believe that in the UK a few retailers have blanked out the barcodes on their products. (This was probably as a result of the Red Laser app which checked for the lowest price of a scanned item). Buycott cannot work without a barcode to scan.
- Not all products are on the database. It is expanding daily, and you can help by adding info to it.
If you want to be more conscious about what you buy and what political actions your money might be funding, check out Buycott.
(You can download it free from the App Store)
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Although I am not a big fan of phone apps, I think I could like this one. All to often these days you cannot tell who owns what and this seems to be one way of keeping track.
I’m going to try this app. With some companies solely relying on their economic interests and forgetting about us and the future of all our families, we must vote with our wallets!
For sure! Let me know if you like it. Many of the brands where I live aren’t covered on the app, so I’d be interested to hear how you find it.
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