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Social enterprise Giki has today (14 May) launched a new app to help consumers understand more about the products they buy from the shops. The app assesses 250,000 supermarket products across sustainability, health and fairness issues.
‘Haven’t had so much fun for ages. All the store cupboard is being pulled out with some shock surprises! Brilliant!’
CAROLINE
A beta tester from Exeter
The idea for Giki came in 2016 when co-founders – and husband and wife – James and Jo Hand were continually struck by how they, their friends and many people they spoke to were struggling to find products that aligned with their own values.
Giki launched in 2017 with the goal of building a prototype to see if there was a simple, intuitive way to link people directly to information that they cared about beyond price and brand. After a successful beta test the launch for Giki’s app was then ready for Spring 2018.
Jo Hand, co-founder of Giki, said, ‘We want to make it quick and easy for everyone to understand whether the product
Giki ratings cover products across food, drink, cosmetics and household products and draw on a number of different sources including on-pack information, government guidelines and scientific research.
The data are pulled into a database which then algorithmically scores each product against all the badge options to create the individual product information.
In total there are 12 badges in three main areas: Sustainability: (recycling, responsible sourcing, low carbon footprint, kinder cleaning, greener cosmetics, local, organic); Health (free from additives, no chemicals of concern, healthier option) and Fairness (animal welfare, animal testing).
Co-founder James Hand says, ‘Giki’s mission is to encourage sustainable consumption by inspiring people to make small, regular changes in their shopping which are good for them, better for the environment and fairer to others. Our vision is that all products and services become sustainable so really we want every product on the market to be awarded as many badges as possible.’
The app, which can be downloaded free of charge from the app store on IOS devices, enables you to scan or search your product, discover how many badges it gets and look for better scoring alternatives.
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