© Digit-Eyes

If one can’t see labels or colors, how can it be possible to tell which package contains, say, dog food? barcoo makes it possible. Since many visually impaired people still manage to find the barcode, once they do, the smartphone reads barcoo’s results out loud – including the name of the product, of course. And since we don’t know of another database in Europe as comprehensive as ours, the chances of getting a hit are extremely high.

In case you don’t know how to use it, here is the instruction for activating such functions on an Apple iPhone. In general, we encourage you to let us know if you use barcoo in an unconventional way because it’s your experiences that help us keep pushing barcoo forward.

In 2009 Frosta became the first food manufacturer in Germany to participate in the Product Carbon Footprint project. Since then, the company has assessed the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions expended as a result of its products. They traced the entire production chain for each of their frozen foods, factoring in raw material production, transportation, storage, processing, distribution, retail, and usage (the consumer’s shopping trip, preparation, washing). Based on the results for most of the products, they could determine that raw materials make up the highest portion of CO2 emissions (about 50%), while further processing and manufacturing logistics make up about 20% and the consumer is (on average) responsible for about 30%.

When you scan the Frosta products in question, you’ll be provided with information about its carbon footprint, from its supplier to its consumer, in grams. We encourage all other manufacturers to provide us with their CO2 information for individual products so we can integrate them into barcoo.

Source: Consumer Centre Hamburg

In times of the swine flu and EHEC, many disinfectant manufacturers sense their big chance to sell their products, advertising for the chemicals with promises like removing “99.9% of bacteria – including EHEC germs!” The fact that these chemicals destroy our natural biological balance is never mentioned. Nor is it mentioned how the chemicals harm the environment and can cause allergies and eczemas. The Stiftung Warentest, the National Institute for Consumer Health Protection, and the Robert Koch Institute agree: these disinfectants are “fundamentally unnecessary” in normal households.

Regular cleaning with environmentally friendly cleaning solutions is enough for sufficient cleanliness, and is beneficial to you and the environment. When you use barcoo, we’ll inform you immediately if a product has been classified as “unnecessary” by the Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg (the consumer advice center in Hamburg).

© by inhabitat.com

That’s why we want to give you the opportunity to find out more about the potential dangers and will let you know whether products you’ve selected are BPA-free or potentially contain BPA.

In this way barcoo not only provides information, but entertainment as well. The next time you’re in a group, pick up any old product and have everybody guess how many times the product has been scanned. Then use barcoo to scan it yourself and whoever was closest to that number is the winner! During their most recent outing, the barcoo team members played that game to help make the wait at a Mexican restaurant go by faster. The question was: where does Corona stand in barcoo’s ScanRank? There was a wide range of guesses – from 10 to 100 scans – and in the end, the right answer was 45! The prize for the correct answer was another bottle of Corona.

Give our little game a try with your friends: scan drinks, sweets, or books and find out who’s the barcoo expert of the group!