The Good Guide

For those of you iPhone addicts (or those like me who love their iTouches), I found an interesting little app. It's called the Good Guide, and it works to rank commercial products on their effect on our health, their environmental responsibility, and their social responsibility. Their rating system comes from multiple independent groups, and is constantly updated to reflect new data both on health and on changes to products.

The only thing I wish they had was an overall price guide. I'm a student - I don't have a lot of money. I want to do a good thing, but being able to filter by price would be really useful.

For those of you without an iPhone/iTouch (blasphemy!), they also have a website, which also details how they rank their products: GoodGuide.

Sites like this are crucial to re-establishing the connection between our actions and their consequence. With the rise of globalization, we don't see what our consumption patterns do to the environment. We buy food, we buy computers, and we buy more, but we don't see the strip mining, the deforestation, and the toxic chemicals which go into it. The internet is a powerful tool in this respect, especially when linked to smart phones. Use them and try to re-establish the social responsibility which we need in the global community.