We recently talked about demonstrations against Monsanto all over the world. What if we could protest, not only physically, but with our money?

Today, we came across a tool that gives consumers the power of knowledge, to make wise purchasing decisions. Using an iPhone/(soon to be available) Android app Buycott, you can now learn about the company behind a product, and if it’s linked to Monsanto or any other “evil” company that you want to avoid.  Just by scanning its barcode!

We got really excited with it and checked it out to see if it also works in Malaysia… and it does! Below is an image gallery of the process we went through. We scanned the box of our housemate’s cereal (Kellogg’s Corn Flakes) and here you can see how it works.

The data the app relies on is crowd-sourced: when the app doesn’t know what the product is, it asks the user to input the name of the product. Therefore, the database is constantly updated and the community benefits from it. We entered “Jacob’s Cream Crackers” as a product name for the next thing we scanned.

This app is very empowering because users can create campaigns against or for certain products. As you can see in one of the images above, there are red or green campaigns. Red campaigns are campaigns against the company – why it is advisable not to buy from a company. Green campaigns show why we should support a given company, maybe because they stand for certain causes, or have social responsibility programmes that you believe in.

Buycott doesn’t create these campaigns, and doesn’t impose what it believes on you. Instead, you join campaigns that suit your purposes and beliefs, and every time you scan a product, if its company (or parent company, or sister company etc) is part of a campaign that you joined, you are alerted.

We recommend this for all consumers who want to make sure that their money goes towards a worthy company.

Download the iPhone App here.