Buycott is an application for your cellular phone. With it you can use your phone to scan the barcode of a product to find out what brand the product belongs to, what company owns the brand, and who ultimately owns the company. In this way you, the buyer, can be selective as to who you want to support or boycott with your purchases.
There are a good number of buyers who would not want to contribute their money to Monsanto or the Koch Industries for example. Monsanto is known for their production and sales of GMO seeds and an unofficially declared war on those who prefer natural seeds that do not terminate after one cycle of production. Koch Industries has a bit of a history of environmentally unfriendly behavior including their funding of human-caused global warming skepticism.
Since large companies often have their subsidiaries, it can be difficult to tell who really owns a company. Fellas at Buycott Inc. have done the investigation for you. They also keep track of what some of the companies support or lobby against. You can learn all this simply by scanning, with your phone, the barcode of a product.
The app has been developed beyond the initial stages, but still has room for improvement. Thus far it looks promising and many are happy to use it.
My concern is that some of the buyers may use this app to practice boycotting based on their personal agenda and social fads rather than on objective grounds and from a well informed position. However, I understand that it is the responsibility of the users how they will avail themselves of this app. The Bhagavad-gita (13.21) teaches that even though an entity may create certain circumstances, ultimately it is the user’s responsibility to respond to the circumstances in the morally healthy way.
To check out this app, see buycott.com.
