App reveals what companies might hide
OpenLabel provides information about ingredients and practices
A new smartphone app may help concerned consumers bring social and environmental justice to the grocery store by supplying information that manufacturers might not want you to see.
OpenLabel allows users to quickly scan the bar code of any of its 20 million products and receive information instantly about the ingredients and the manufacturer, much of it supplied by non-profit groups from Vancouver-based Greenpeace and Seafood Watch to Oxfam and UNICEF.
Does it contain GMOs? Does it protect human rights? The rainforest? You’ll find out in seconds.
Users are also able to add their own commentary about the ethics of products and companies, links to deeper information and even recipes.
The company hopes to harness the most persuasive political forces to effect positive social change.
“The dollar is the vote,” said founder Scott Kennedy. “You vote for candidates, you can volunteer, you can make donations, but the most powerful way you can make change is with how you spend your money.”
“Those trillions of dollars are what determines what your society looks like,” he said. “That is going to be especially true for the food movement.”
OpenLabel — which is still in its startup phase and suffers from large gaps in its data — means to replace a whole handful of apps started up by non-profits and social enterprises. Many of the existing apps — from Buycott and Good Guide to CauseCart and Bunny Free by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are nicheoriented — focused on animal rights, sustainable seafood, children’s toys or products that harm the rainforest, or allowing to you punish particular corporations such as Monsanto.
Where those apps fell short by failing to engage enough people in the process of creating data, Kennedy said he hopes OpenLabel can succeed by allowing users to create their own content, like a combination of Yelp and Wikipedia, two models that have worked well.
“We are hitting a critical mass of phones out there and people are now learning to take out their phone and scan for a better price,” he said.
“I think we are catching this at the right time.”