Peo­ple buy­ing Angel Soft toi­let paper prob­a­bly don’t real­ize that they’re con­tribut­ing to the cof­fers of Koch indus­tries, a com­pa­ny that’s spent mil­lions on orga­ni­za­tions that work to sup­press work­ers’ rights, pass anti-immi­gra­tion leg­is­la­tion and fuel glob­al-warm­ing denial. But when thou­sands of prod­ucts on super­mar­ket shelves fall under the cor­po­rate umbrel­la of com­pa­nies like Koch, it’s dif­fi­cult to deter­mine who’s get­ting your mon­ey and to what polit­i­cal end it’s being used. So up stepped 26-year-old free­lance pro­gram­mer Ivan Par­do, who designed a smart­phone app that can help you fig­ure it out: Buycott.

'when thousands of products on supermarket shelves fall under the corporate umbrella of companies like Koch, it’s difficult to determine who’s getting your money and to what political end it’s being used'

Par­do decid­ed to cre­ate Buy­cott after hear­ing Con­gres­sion­al can­di­date Dar­cy Burn­er (D‑Wash.) pro­pose the idea of an app that allows con­sumers to see the cor­po­ra­tions behind the prod­ucts on super­mar­ket shelves dur­ing her keynote speech at last year’s net­roots nation. Beyond trac­ing the cor­po­rate fam­i­ly tree of every­day goods, Buy­cott also allows users to cre­ate and join cam­paigns that sort com­pa­nies accord­ing to how their prac­tices affect cer­tain issues. For exam­ple, if you join the cam­paign ​“Demand GMO label­ing,” you’ll be alert­ed when a prod­uct you’ve scanned is linked to one of 36 com­pa­nies iden­ti­fied as hav­ing opposed the manda­to­ry label­ing of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied food.

Buy­cott can be down­loaded for free from Apple’s App store and Android’s Google Play.