From TUAW:
If you are environmentally conscious and only want to buy products that are safe and “Green,” then look no further than your iPhone. That’s because Good Guide [iTunes link] for iPhone allows you to search for these eco-friendly products. As a matter of fact, GoodGuide indexes over 65,000 products in several different categories.
When you search through a category and find a specific product that you would like to learn more about, GoodGuide gives you details that can better help you make your purchase. You can find things like: Overall rating, health rating, environmental rating, and social rating.
You can also create a shopping list with the products that you like; however, this feature requires you to create an account with GoodGuide. The application is available for free from the iTunes App Store.
Mobile applications are perfectly positioned to give real time feedback on product purchases. This will likely be a booming area in the future. One of the difficulties, however, is data entry and search. Marc Smith’s group at Microsoft Research was one of the first to reappropriate the cell phone camera as a barcode scanner, making it easier for people to search for a product without the cumbersome task of manually typing it in. It appears as though the commercial offerings on Android actually do a decent job of this:
From FutureLab:
I already wrote about the implications of putting an instant price-matching device in the hands of retail shoppers, but there are other interesting angles to it. These applications seem to be among the few with one or two natural business models built into them from the start. Placing contextual recommendations next to price look-up results is one; powering branded wishlists and registries is another.
In terms of sustainability, having information at the point of purchase about the environmental impact of a product could affect purchase decisions. However, it’s likely that most people would be more motivated about real-time comparison shopping than measuring environmental impact–particularly if interacting with the application is tedious (e.g., how often will someone actually pull out a cell phone to scan a product’s barcode?). Thus, environmental impact metadata will have to be overlayed or displayed along with the primary product information
Other questions: how accurate is the environmental impact calculation? Where is this data drawn from? How standardized is it? What aspects does it incorporate? Simply knowing how far a product has traveled reveals volumes about that product’s carbon footprint (I live in Seattle, even Florida oranges have to travel a great distance). Products that come from China are likely to have been manufactured with coal and, of course, transported half-way across the world.
This discussion reminds me of a report I read on TreeHugger about consumer awareness and interest of “green credentials” when making a purchase.
From TreeHugger:
Consumers need better labeling for green products. And they’ve said so. According to a report released by Strategic Oxygen and Cohn & Wolfe, consumers are looking closely for green credentials when it comes to big energy suckers like HDTVs, computers and laptops. But when they are looking, labels that convolute information or hype up what isn’t there makes buying a truly green item confusing and difficult. Indeed, better labeling standards would help clear up these confusions and put those companies doing the truly good work in the spotlight. While we have Energy Star and EPEAT, we know that this isn’t enough. Some requirements for what should and shouldn’t be on a label would be helpful. And yet, some responsibility needs to fall on consumers.
The article goes on to say that more than half of 10,000 people polled in 12 nations said their lack of awareness interferes with buying gadgets that consume modest amounts of energy, use recycled packaging, and low-toxic materials, and offer recycling options. The report also stated that 45% of customers named price as the biggest turn-off from buying green.
