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After scanning a product, you will get a information, if the product is produced by a company, who rejects animal testing (in Germany). Check out the German post.

More than two years ago we added the food traffic light to barcoo and so a TV superstar was born. The traffic light was and remains one of our biggest success factors – thanks to all of you barcoonauts who’ve entered over 600,000 nutritional values to date! And that’s why it’s time to step it up a notch. What we’re introducing today is brilliant, though it’s unfortunately not so easy to communicate (that’s why I am not expecting the same communicative pull as we had with the first food traffic light). The current traffic light shows you in a simple and direct way that a product contains, for example, lots of sugar. However, if you scan a piece of chocolate, that’s already pretty self-evident. Thus, the added value of the food traffic light is limited.

That bothered us for quite some time, but now we’ve finally come up with a solution. Now, with just one touch, you can compare a product’s nutritional values with the average nutritional values of ones in the same category. How does this chocolate compare with other chocolates? Is this yogurt comparatively high in sugar or low in fat? Pre-packaged products often contain an excess of salt, which is partly responsible for high blood pressure (a widespread disease in Europe). From now on you’ll be able to find direct comparisons in barcoo.

Which never would have been possible without each of you! Now that you barcoo users are over 3.3 million-strong, you’ve helped us provide one of the best forms of transparent media out there. From this day onward, we’re entering new territory: barcoo has designed and officially released the Food Traffic Light+. Initially you’ll find the traffic light comparisons for each of the following products you scan in: chocolate, snacks, sweets, juices, spread, milk, and other dairy products. Our next expansion level will include all drinks.

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.

First and foremost: With regard to radio activity at the moment we (in Europe) can eat all food from Japan without hesitation:

• The percentage of food imports from Japan amounts in Europe to a mere .1%. Typical Japanese food like shiitake mushrooms don’t actually come from Japan, but grow in European greenhouses. The sushi consumed in Europe only rarely comes from the North Pacific.
• There is no way that potentially contaminated food could already be in Europe. Fish from Japanese waters end up on the German market no sooner than three months after being caught (according to the Bundesverband der deutschen Fischindustrie).
• Soy sauces (the most significant foodstuff import from Japan) mature in barrels and are thus safe to consume for at least another year (according to the Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg).

So there’s no reason to panic for the time being. However, some believe that in the long term there will be a danger for us European consumers. That’s why with barcoo you can find out, for example, where that fish you want to buy comes from. All you have to do is type in the catch area number and then you receive information about whether the fish comes from the North Pacific or not. At this point you can take the opportunity to see whether the type of fish is an endangered species or not. Currently, in terms of radio activity, you can eat all products from Japan. Should that change, you can find out in barcoo (and probably in every other news source out there).

By using flavoring agents many fruits get upgraded to a supposedly higher grade fruit. In this way manufacturers benefit from saving money on their purchases, but consumers are being deceived when, for example, cranberries are transformed into cherries or strawberries by using flavoring agents and sugar. Morever, fruit slurry is produced in part by using smaller pieces of fruit. As with meat slurry, fruit purées are combined together, colored and flavored.

Consumer Central Hamburg

Several smoothie and fruit slice manufacturers generate false illusions on the packaging of their products by overrepresenting the more expensive fruits instead. But if you take a look at the small print on the list of ingredients, it’s evident that this fruit often plays a less important role in terms of quantity.

If you scan one of products that have been exposed by the Consumer Central in Hamburg (German), barcoo notifies you and, if applicable, gives you a warning.

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!

This blog post is only relevant for our German readers. It’s about the expensive Xmas versions of sweets and that you can find this information now in barcoo.

Happy holidays!

We inform you quickly and precisely about products. For that we also use representations that are controversial. One example, is our nutritional value traffic light.  We are confident that the advantages of the traffic light outweigh any possible disadvantages. Others see it differently. Especially in some areas of the food industry, there are reservations. Some even think we are against food manufacturers  and that is certainly not the case. We appreciate any manufacturer that will openly communicate what type of ingredients go into their food processing. After all, we need to eat something as well ;-)

We would like to repeat due to recent circumstances, that barcoo is neutral and barcoo wants that everyone is able to be forthcoming with their opinions.

If you are a manufacturer and  you feel wrongly treated by the information about your product that is integrated into barcoo, then simply contact us so that we can reexamine the sources explicitly. For example, in this way you are able to explain that your product received the red traffic light because of it’s high fruit content that lead to a high value of sugar. We can also integrate your contents. They will be shown in our system with their sources (as always).

Our aim is to provide to the consumers as much transparency as possible so that they can reach their own conclusions based on their own criteria. This certainly includes content provided by the manufacturers.  If you have any questions, please send us an Email or call us directly.

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.