New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart

Forbes: New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart

... The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to Buycott. “It’s been completely bootstrapped up to this point,” he said. Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.

Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and Google GOOG +2.28% Play in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries.

Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson JNJ +0.56%.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food. ...

Comments

[Kenton]

Thanks for this, Michael. Interesting that the app (supposedly) doesn't make the moral judgments for you. I don't have a problem with the Koch brothers, so I wouldn't be turned off by that, but I might boycott an item owned by George Soros. I see the app has been taken down while the developer works out some issues.

[Michael W Kruse]

Yes. The app could be used in variety of ways. I was actually intrigued in that it puts just a little more info in the hands of the consumer about products they buy. What they do with that knowledge is up to them.