Responsible Consumption from changents.com by Stephane de Messieres

Empowering Consumers with Tools to Shop Responsibly

I want to use markets to reform capitalism.

As I was growing up I was always hearing about Big Bad Companies and all the horrible things they do to our environment, our communities and our politics. We lived near Washington DC, and The Washington Post was always full of stories about corporate lobbyists and their corrupting influence on Congress.

I never had much faith in government as a solution to this problem. My middle school history classes cured me of any passing infatuation with communism. My high school history classes convinced me that our government would only be able to regulate the worst offenses, usually after the fact. So for years I was stuck with a depressing view: capitalism stinks, but there’s nothing better.

In college I started paying for my own food and clothes, and I soon realized that I was buying products from all the companies I was supposed to hate: ExxonMobil, Burger King, Microsoft, Altria. I felt guilty nearly every time I opened my wallet.

After reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, I finally decided to stop feeling guilty and start shopping responsibly. I started to research the brands I was buying. Crest or Colgate? Eastern Mountain Sports or The North Face? Heineken or Sam Adams? It took longer than I expected to find information on the social and environmental behavior of these brands. Often there was no information at all, or only tidbits. But I had just donned my cape and tights as The Conscious Consumer, and there was no stopping me.

And then it was time to buy a new pair of jeans. All the big brands were embroiled in a sweatshop fiasco, so I decided to dive deeper. I spent two hours one night searching online before I finally found a company that sold union-made jeans. I was triumphant as I placed my order. Take that, Corporate Malfeasance! Another victory for The Conscious Consumer.

The jeans arrived two weeks later. I was appalled. They were so uncomfortable – and ugly! The waist ballooned around my navel, the seat sagged and the crotch pinched. I remember squirming in front of the mirror, trying to love those wretched jeans. But I finally decided to return them.

That was a turning point. I realized that shopping responsibly is hard. I was burned out after buying only a few things. It was overwhelming: I’d never have the time to research all the issues for every brand I buy. And if this was so difficult for a geek like me, it was bound to be difficult for anyone else who tried it.

So I hung up the cape and tights and went back to shopping blind. But it nagged me every time I opened my wallet. Shopping responsibly shouldn’tbe this hard. I started wondering about systemic solutions. What if consumers had a tool to navigate all this information? What about a database of corporate scores?

My friends tease me about my gratuitous use of databases. But it occurred to me that I could finally combine my organizational skills with a lifelong passion for improving corporate behavior.

From there it was no longer a question of why. It was a question of how.

Fast forward two years. In grad school two friends and I founded Citizens Market, a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower consumers with tools to shop responsibly. I'm now leading a team of volunteers to develop a crowdsourced website for responsible shopping, where information about corporate behavior is organized into scores that consumers can see while they shop.

Citizens Market will invite anyone to contribute information – i.e., a review and a rating – for any company’s performance on a certain issue, such as treatment of minorities, political lobbying or toxic emissions. Submissions will be reviewed and rated for quality by peers, so that persuasive reviews have a higher impact on the company’s final score. For each company, the website will automatically generate a “report card” of issue scores. Each company’s profile will be linked with its brands and products’ barcodes. We’ll post our algorithms and code base to ensure total transparency and encourage feedback.

The database will deliver personalized results. Consumers may assign priority weights for the various social and environmental issues. When a consumer requests a score for a brand, that score will incorporate a weighted average of the issue scores, thereby reflecting the consumer’s values.

Consumers will have convenient access to the scores as they move through the real or virtual marketplace. Anyone will be able to quickly search the website for free. A widget will enable consumers to view company scores while shopping at other websites. With new mobile technologies, such as barcode scanners and text messages, consumers will use their cell phones to instantly view scores as they walk down the store aisle. In this way, consumers can rapidly compare the social performance of companies as they move through any marketplace.

Check out our prototype at www.citizensmarket.org and add a review about a corporation!