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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNew App Lets You Boycott Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart
http://www.realfarmacy.com/new-app-lets-you-boycott-monsanto-and-more-by-scanning-your-shopping-cart/(Forbes) In her keynote speech at last years annual Netroots Nation gathering, Darcy Burner pitched a seemingly simple idea to the thousands of bloggers and web developers in the audience. The former Microsoft programmer and congressional candidate proposed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe barcodes to check whether conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch were behind a product on the shelves.
Burner figured the average supermarket shopper had no idea that buying Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper or Dixie cups meant contributing cash to Koch Industries through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. Similarly, purchasing a pair of yoga pants containing Lycra or a Stainmaster carpet meant indirectly handing the Kochs your money (Koch Industries bought Invista, the worlds largest fiber and textiles company, in 2004 from DuPont).
At the time, Burner created a mock interface for her app, but thats as far as she got. She was waiting to find the right team to build out the back end, which could be complicated given often murky corporate ownership structures.
She wasnt aware that as she delivered her Netroots speech, a group of developers was hard at work on Buycott, an even more sophisticated version of the app she proposed.
I remember reading Forbes story on the proposed app to help boycott Koch Industries and wishing that we were ready to launch our product, said Buycotts marketing director Maceo Martinez.
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. Its been completely bootstrapped up to this point, he said. Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.
Pardos handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and Google. 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 youve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and youll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.
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.
Deciding to add that campaign to your Buycott app might make buying your breakfast nearly impossible, as that list includes not just headline grabbers like agricultural giant Monsanto but just about every big consumer company with a presence in the supermarket aisle: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kraft, Heinz, Kelloggs, Unilever and more.
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niyad
(113,524 posts)and states that were fighting ratification, as well as other companies, like nestle (with its deadly infant formula. made shopping an adventure, but, even then, we believed in voting with our dollars. people used to ask me how I could keep so many names in my head (I have a little list. . .) have never stopped doing it.
Bay Boy
(1,689 posts)anything with corn oil or soybean oil off your shopping list. That and any gas with ethanol.
Gidney N Cloyd
(19,846 posts)silverweb
(16,402 posts)[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I love it!
otohara
(24,135 posts)Are Koch... Costco goes to great lengths to hide it including avoiding email inquiries.
meow2u3
(24,768 posts)I don't want to support the Koch Bros. unwittingly. I want to see those criminals punished, not rewarded, for their crimes against humanity.
tavalon
(27,985 posts)FreeState
(10,575 posts)Im on an iPhone and cant get the app to let me register, which it requires to use. Seems Im not the only one by the comments on the app store.
dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)Love this. Darcy Burner is a great progressive, and is working hard to make a difference. I'll download the app for Android.
Rhiannon12866
(205,839 posts)bahrbearian
(13,466 posts)I wish she could of unseated that asshole Dave Reichert,