Incorporating your feedback that we received in the course of last year, WeGreen created a simplified version of the sustainability footprint. All of the evaluations are now combined into one single footprint. To be able to do this, we analysed all of our sources once again and divided them into three categories: “hard”, “medium” and “soft”. A source that is considered as “hard” has a threefold impact on the sustainability footprint, compared to a one fold impact of a “soft” source. Here is an example of the new design:

Moreover, you can now show the corporations, that you care about sustainability. The number of people showing their interest will be presented by us in a transparent way. On top of that, you can also vote on the sustainability performance of each company. To be able to do so, just go to www.wegreen.de and create an account.

barcoo has now integrated information about co2-footprints of products. So far this information is only available in German.

When you buy Fairtrade products you can be sure that “the farmers’ and employees’ living and working conditions are being improved via fair trade prices and premiums. On top of that, child and forced labor are prohibited.” So far so good. Still, it’s all pretty anonymous. And behind fair trade products there are human beings with faces. Though these hadn’t been visible before, that’s changing drastically with barcoo! Whenever Fairtrade has more information about a product’s origin and the people who participated in its production, you can get this information using barcoo.

You can find out which companies or cooperatives work on a product or its ingredients as well as where and under what sorts of conditions they work. Once you’ve scanned the fair trade product in front of you, the information gets integrated into barcoo. When you click on the page of a fair trade product, there are often photo galleries or a history of the producers. So get out there and scan lots of fair trade products… and maybe buy them, too!

tegut… is an anthroposophical enterprise that really means well with our world and therefore pays close attention towards high quality and environmentally friendliness regarding its store brands. That is why we are excited that tegut now offers all you barcoonauts the possibility to pull up the information directly while shopping. After each tegut product is scanned, you can find next to the common neutral information clearly marked information provided by tegut (in German):

As a matter of fact, we are even more pleased with the news that in tegut’s 300 Supermarkets, there will be displays encouraging customers to scan products with barcoo. That’s cool!

We call this initiative augmented labeling and encourage other manufacturers open to the idea to join in.

WeGreen has updated and extended the Sustainability Footprint (and it will be available in UK and France soon on barcoo). We now include even more sources of information about companies’ CSR performance. Since the first launch in March, a couple of new sources have been researched and bundled, for example the “Black Book on Brand Companies“, the “Brandoscope“, an independent sustainability index, or the “Tomorrow’s Value Rating“. Brand new is the “CSR- Company Check“, a rating by the German Consumer Initiative.

Furthermore we updated all of the other sources and adjusted some of them. As a result, you can now access the newest version of the “Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics” and meanwhile the whole report of the “German Sustainability Report Ranking“- results are available for you. However, two sources had to be removed, as they did not full fill our up -to –dateness regulation of two years and the institutions won’t continue their ratings in the future. You can find a complete list of all the sources on the WeGreen- facebook- page.

In dialog with the organizations and institutions behind the sources, we made some slight adjustments. For the source “Rank a Brand” we decreased the green and yellow threshold from 66% and 33% to 60% and 30% respectively. The “Sustainability Report Ranking” is not rated after the companies rank anymore but after the level of points achieved. From 66,6% of the possible points on a company receives a green light, from 33,3% on a yellow light For “Brandoscope”, a company needs to be certified in a least two of the ten sustainability areas to receive green now.

All together we connected over 2.000 companies with multiple million products. Meanwhile, you can research companies independent from any product search with barcoo. If you are interested in the Sustainability Footprint of companies outside the consumer goods market, you can find this information at http://www.sustainabilityfootprint.eu.