Jeff Bolingbroke

“There are just too many environmentally harmful options! Help me, technology. You’re my only hope!”

You’ve run out of a household cleaner or a personal care item so you run to the store to restock. You reach the megastore aisle and are faced with a daunting decision: dozens upon dozens of varieties of cleaners and moisturizers, all with innumerable, unpronounceable ingredients, some of which are bound to be carcinogenic, eco-toxic or made by underprivileged sweatshop workers facing a life expectancy half of your own. Decision-making paralysis sets in as you engage in a mental Olympics, balancing the cost per millilitre with the distant memory of a news item you saw last month about “something-something-benzoate” that could harm your chances of reproduction.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all the information about a given product, ingredient or company were available on an as-needed basis, like when we’re standing in front of a wide range of nearly identical varieties of toothpaste? Wouldn’t it be even more amazing if something that many of us never leave the house without could be the source?

Luckily, some creative and forward-thinking designers who understand our frustrations have created a suite of free mobile phone applications and websites to help you make informed consumer purchases.

Good Guide (goodguide.com), for example, is now available as an iPhone app with a barcode-scanning feature, or as a text-messaging system. The Good Guide is a comprehensive guide to better buying, indexed into categories like food, personal care, household chemicals and toys. Once you’ve selected the category you’re interested in, you’ll see a list of products, arranged from “best” to “worst,” rated on a variety of criteria such as human health concerns, environmental detriment and corporate social responsibility.

Along with the rating and rationale behind it, you’re given a list of nasty, usually tongue-tying ingredients commonly found in this type of product, and an explanation of why they should be avoided. A quick scan of the moisturizer section reveals, for example, that aluminum starch octenylsuccinate, a neurotoxin, is an ingredient to watch out for. But ingredients aren’t the only hazards for consumers.

The Pesticide Action Network (PAN), an international NGO dedicated to raising awareness about the downsides of pesticides and promoting alternatives, created an iPhone app called What’s On My Food? (whatsonmyfood.org) to address chemicals that could be found clinging to agricultural products. The chemicals are listed in order, from most to least commonly found, with info about their toxicity (known, probably or possible carcinogen, neurotoxin, etc.) and in what concentration it is detected in both organic and “conventional” agriculture products.

A quick search reveals that conventionally grown blueberries can contain, according to the USDA, residue from 48 different pesticides, seven that are known or possible carcinogens and 22 which are suspected hormonal disruptors (organic blueberries have significantly less). But don’t wipe that blueberry juice away from your mouth quite yet; your food isn’t the only source of harm.

Between 2004 and 2009, Greenpeace waged a successful campaign to let consumers know that Kimberly-Clark, the corporation that produces Kleenex, was using Canadian old-growth/ancient boreal forest wood to make their tissues. In 2009, the company responded by implementing a policy to use only fibre from environmentally responsible sources, like recycled paper and Forest Stewardship-certified wood. Following this success, Greenpeace released the Tissue Guide app, designed to give tissue, napkin and toilet paper buyers an idea of what sources are used to make the products. They make recommendations based on the percentage of recycled fibre and the chemicals used for bleaching. For non-iPhone users, the app is available for the Android operating system, and a mobile-centric website is available for phone browsing at 3rdwhale.com/greenpeace/wap.

Making smart consumer decisions is one of the simplest and most effective ways of doing your part to ensure the longevity of human life on Earth. Businesses that are more concerned about their bottom lines than about the impact of their products are unlikely to advertise their follies, so the impetus is squarely on us to use our consumer dollars to vote for companies that adhere to and promote the values that we approve of.