Prototyping a Community-Generated, Mobile Device-Enabled Database of Environmental Impact Reviews of Consumer Products

GreenScanner is a system that helps people engage in environmentally preferable purchasing during their everyday consumer transactions. This system has two parts: a dynamic online database of community-generated environmental impact reviews of products, and a mobile phone application that allows consumers to access these reviews at a point of purchase by photographing a product´s universal product code (UPC). This paper describes a prototype of the system that was released publicly in April 2006, and analyzes the results of that deployment. Over its first year of existence, the site received approximately 31,000 hits. However, during that time, only 79 subjective comments were uploaded. This paper analyzes the site´s usage patterns, and describes a number of improvements to the system that are currently under way.