Values-based shopping at Alonovo.com

A few days ago I came across a website that fits nicely with my shopping-season mantra of values-based consumerism: www.alonovo.com. It's slogan is "intelligent marketplace" and it's mission is "to connect the concept of corporate behavior directly to the profit motive."

Shopping from this site helps you save the world in several ways, each of which I happen to think is pretty neat:

• Like many online shopping sites, this one collects revenue from Amazon for directing buyers to them - but these guys donate at least 20% of their ad revenues to charity. If you register with the site, you can choose which charity you'd like to support from a long list, but registration is not required to shop.
  
• Next to each product is an easy-to-spot and easy-to-read chart with a "value rating" for the company that sells it, based primarily on data from KLD and the Federal Elections Commission. You can view five sub-ratings (CSR, environment, workplace, ethics, and customer focus) without registering, and more detail after you register.
• After registering, you can also set your own relative values, so that the ratings become personalized to the issues that are most important to you.

There are a bunch of things that I like about this set-up. One is that it's as easy as you want it to be - no registration required and easy-t0-read charts. And yet, the more detailed data is there. In fact, accessing KLD's Socrates database is usually quite expensive, so having some of its data available for free is a huge plus. Also, indicating what's important to you as an individual has the potential to educate companies much more rapidly on what's really important to consumers. Finally, if you're using the site as an alternative to a trip to the mall, think of all that petroleum and CO2 you're saving!