Corporate Fallout Detector

BandwidthHog writes "MIT student shows off Corporate Fallout Detector. Acts and looks kinda like a Geiger counter, but it's a UPC scanner with an internal, updateable database of corporate misdeeds, with both Pollution and Corporate Ethics modes. I want one."

Comments

An interesting first step

[TopShelf]

While this kid makes a funny point, one thing that's missing is the fact that a UPC barcode only links to the manufacturer or wholesale distributor of the finished good. Taking the trail back into the supply chain to contract manufacturers and raw materials suppliers would probably yield more enviro-nastiness than you'd find in consumer-oriented companies.

Re:here we go again

[femto]

What one really needs is a scanner which one programs with one's OWN ethics. It then measures against these ethics and beeps accordingly.

Not sure how one goes about 'programming' ethics though. I imagine delegating your ethical decisions to a beeper also raises a whole lot of new ethical questions!

Actually

[barryfandango]

Do some homework. The P.T. Nikomas Gemilang factory in Indonesia, which makes a large portion of Nike's shoes, pays its workers well below the poverty line for that country. Workers at that factory have to leave their homes and live alone in low-rent housing because they can hardly afford to feed themselves, let alone take care of a family. In this case Nike's practices are despicable in the context of the local economy.

The first response I hear to a statement like this is: "Should Nike just pull out then, and leave all those people unemployed and starving?" No, of course not. But that doesn't mean i like to see a wealthy american corporation exploiting the poorest of the poor. I will vote with my dollars by not buying their shoes, spread the word, and hope that other moral people can overcome the ocean of advertising in front of them and do the same.