New device lets customers scan for social responsibility

Citizen Works 9/2/03
Fighting Back

New device lets customers scan for social responsibility

Imagine going to the store with a device that could scan product bar codes and then tell you whether the company behind the product was a repeat corporate polluter or had a history of labor violations?

That's the idea behind the Corporate Fallout Detector, a device developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student James Patten. Patten's device combines a database of pollution complaints and ethics violations with a bar code scanner in a Geiger-counter-like casing.

"This makes it easier to make decisions about who you want to support," Patten told the New York Times.

He said he has no plans to turn his device into a commercial product.

For more, see: "A Good Corporate Citizen? This Scanner Can Tell," by Will Wade of the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/28/technology/circuits/28fall.html