The Christmas season is descending upon us, and with that comes a massive increase in consumer shopping. I'm going to be talking a lot more about how to be an ethical shopper this Christmas, but one thing you can do right now is install the Knowmore.org Firefox extension. (If you're not using Firefox, you should be.)
If you haven't checked it out yet, Knowmore.org is a wikipedia based database of ethical brand related issues. The great thing about the firefox add-on is that while your just surfing around websites, the add-on will notify you with a little pop up if you stumble onto a website they have in their database. For example, if I go to the Best Buy website, Knowmore will inform me that they have brand information on that company. From there it's completely up to the user whether or not to look into more information about that particular company.
Basically, it is a really easy way to get user-relevant information when looking at online stores, so be sure to give it a try!
Knowmore Add-On
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that's a really cool little device. My supervisor over the summer was thinking about launching a website that gave ethical information about brands and products. I understand that it's important have transparency when buying...things. But why buy something for christmas? it's THE most frustrating thing, trying to find that "Perfect" gift. Half the time I find myself returning whatever I got for my parents or brother. This christmas, I'm just going to give hugs.
Hey Layton,
I absolutely agree. We seem to live in a culture where we have to express our affection through the purchasing of items. Gifts are a nice gesture, but so many people find themselves thousands of dollars in debt over the Christmas season which is completely unnecessary. I think you should start a 'Hugs-for-Christmas' movement.
Hey, this blog has been really helpful and informative in helping me investigate some products. It can be really hard to distinguish what products are actually ethical in all of their practices. It's great that you've done all this research and put it in one place. Great job!
That's fantastic. I always imagined that the public would have to find the resources to better educate themselves but right in the browser just makes it incredibly convenient. I just recently installed firefox and I'm kind of surprised this useful add-on wasn't an option.
I may be totally off base here, but how reliable is knowmore? What kind of platform is it run off of? If it's a wiki how likely is it I might get false information? If it's a news source might it report on events misread by other media?