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Conscious shopping: Innovative website gives customers instant details on products
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Conscious shopping for a better world
An exciting new website and iPhone app allows conscious shoppers to quickly find important safety and environmental information on products for which they are shopping. With this innovative technology, customers may turn the tables on producers, as their desires increasingly influence sales.
In the past, a label might describe a product like laundry detergent as green or safe, yet verifying these claims was beyond the ability of the average shopper. Even with the ingredients listed, most conscious customers would not know if any ingredient might be carcinogenic or pose some other risk.
With the vast abilities of the Internet for inputting and processing data, finding information critical to our health and environment is becoming increasingly easier and more user friendly. At the forefront of this trend is the website GoodGuide and its accompanying iPhone application. Developed by Dara O’Rourke, a professor of environmental and labor policy at the University of California, Berkeley, GoodGuide may become a key force in pressuring producers to create products that customers want.
A recent New York Times article featuring GoodGuide explains how it works:
Users enter a product’s name to get scores. For instance, Tom’s of Maine deodorant gets an 8.6 in part because it has no carcinogens, while Arrid XX antiperspirant rates a 3.8 because it contains known carcinogens. Another click leads to information behind the scores, like whether an ingredient causes reproductive problems or produces toxic waste, or whether the company has women and racial minorities in executive positions or faces labor lawsuits.
Best of all, the site and iPhone app are free of charge. Though the site is still relatively new, many key people are excited at the prospects of this new technology. Also from the Times article:
“What we think of now as green is a marketing mirage,” usually based on a single environmentally friendly practice, said Daniel Goleman, author of “Ecological Intelligence,” who switched deodorants and shampoos because of GoodGuide. The site could potentially “have a revolutionary effect on industry and commerce,” he said, by educating shoppers about the ramifications of buying a particular product.
The box immediately below provides several ideas and links on how to take advantage of this new technology and start your more conscious shopping. We also invite you to comment below and let us know what you think. With this and other new technologies, will product creation become increasingly customer driven?
What you can do:
- Read the New York Times article on conscious shopping and this exciting new product at this link.
- Explore the GoodGuide website at http://www.goodguide.com.
- Download the GoodGuide app for your mobile phone at this link and start having fun with conscious shopping!
- Spread this news to your friends and colleagues, and bookmark this article on key news websites using the "Share This" icon just below the title of this article.
Fred Burks served as personal language interpreter to Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Gore, and other top dignitaries in secret meetings. As part of an international network of researchers and news analysts, Fred obtains and disseminates key, reliable information about powerful, yet little-known forces which shape our world. For more, see articles and links in the right column of this page.
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