Have you ever wondered if the money you spend ends up funding causes you oppose?
The front page of Buycott’s website poses this question to visitors. In a political landscape where a dollar for Stephanie Meyer turns into a boon for anti-gay rights organizations and cash-flooded lobbyists have just as much of a say in a congressman’s vote as his constituents, it’s becoming an increasingly important question. Buycott is a new app created by 26-year-old developer Ivan Pardo that helps consumers align their spending with their principles.
Using the app, consumers can scan product barcodes and then view that product’s “family tree” – the brand, the company that produces it, and what larger conglomerates, if any, own that company. The app then crosschecks how those companies spend their money with the campaigns you support or corporations you want to avoid.
The Buycott website homepage says, “a buycott is the opposite of a boycott. Buycott helps you to organize your everyday consumer spending so that it reflects your principals,” but in truth, the campaigns work in two ways. Some campaigns focus more on “buycotts” – purchasing products with parent companies that align with your values – while others operate on a more traditional boycott model by helping you identify products you want to avoid.
Depending on the campaigns you choose, Buycott can severely limit the number of items you can put in your basket at the grocery store. For instance, joining the “Demand GMO Labeling” campaign creates a list of 36 companies to boycott, including many high-profile brands like Campbell’s, General Mills, and Coca-Cola, all of which made significant contributions to No on Prop 37. Campaigns that include buycotts in addition to their boycotts help mitigate this effect somewhat, though the lists of companies to buy from usually fail to equal the number of companies to avoid.
Though the largest and most popular campaigns on Buycott currently include boycotts of Monsanto and Koch Industries, support for LGBT equality, and acting as a proponent of renewable energy, Buycott is an app with a mission more than an agenda. While its timely arrival on the app market, so soon after the signing of the inflammatory Monsanto Protection Act, suggests beginnings rooted in social justice, its purpose lies more in meeting consumers’ growing demands for information about the choices they make and the products they purchase.
Ultimately, it’s up to consumers to choose the campaigns they want to support, and the app currently sports a growing list of over 100 campaigns users can join. If a campaign that meets your principles doesn’t exist, Buycott works with you to create a new campaign that others can then join as well. Although campaigns supporting mandatory GMO labeling or boycotting corporations like Montesano or Koch Industries count their supporters in the thousands or tens of thousands, Buycott’s non-stance on issues is highlighted by the fact that there are also Buycott pro-life campaigns, though their supports number in the hundreds.
While joining campaigns like “Say No to Factory Farming” or “Local and Sustainable Food Initiative” can help shape your purchases through buycotting or boycotting of multiple companies, app users can also select specific companies or products to boycott or buycott. Campaign information includes a brief background, a graph tracking the number of campaign members, and most interestingly, a list of “campaign targets,” which includes companies to boycott and companies to buycott as a part of that campaign.
Buycott was ABC News’s App of the Week last week, and this, along with a surge in the app’s media coverage, meant hundreds of thousands of new downloads for the app, which in turn created some functionality issues that Buycott hopes to have resolved in a matter of days. Though the app was previously available on iTunes for the iPhone and in Google Play for Android, the Android app was taken down to fix a glitch and is now listed as “coming soon.”
In the wake of Citizens United, more than ever, the dollars you spend don’t just go to line the coffers of businesses or their CEOs, but instead have an increasingly significant and meaningful impact on our day-to-day lives. Legislation like the Monsanto Protection Act makes this even more apparent, and socially conscious consumers face a landscape of increasingly difficult shopping decisions. Luckily for these consumers, Buycott doesn’t just tell us to put our money where our mouth is; it gives us the tools to do so.
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