Tomorrow's Value Rating data helps ethical shoppers

Data from the Tomorrow’s Value Rating is being incorporated into an innovative mobile phone app to help consumers check a company’s social responsibility rating when out shopping.

Barcoo, the barcode-based smart phone app, and WeGreen, the barcode scanning service, are incorporating the overall scores from the Tomorrow’s Value Rating into their service, which allows customers to use their phones to scan a barcode on the product they are considering purchasing. This gives them access to information such as how environmentally friendly the product is, and how socially responsible the manufacturer or producer is.

Scheduled for release in the UK later this summer, the Barcoo and WeGreen app was first launched in Germany, quickly gaining 600,000 users carrying out two million scans a month.

Thomas Krick of Two Tomorrows, global programme manager for the Tomorrow’s Value Rating, says: “The app is a free download and has encouraged shoppers in Germany to shop more ethically. By using a traffic light system, the shopper can easily see how a producer stacks up in terms of sustainability, carbon footprint and even how it treats its staff.

”The app’s drive to increase transparency among producers is welcome and we expect it to receive an enthusiastic reception from consumers in the UK.”

The Tomorrow’s Value Rating assesses the world’s largest companies on how well they manage their most pressing social and environmental issues. This includes investigating the degree to which companies consider sustainability within their strategy, governance, engagement, supply chain and innovations. By doing this, the rating shows how companies across different global industry sectors are performing and identifies areas of sustainability performance that still have much scope for improvement among the majority of companies.