The Origin App

People deserve to know where their products come from, and how product origins impact the world and the issues we care most about.
“Origin” refers to the journey that brings a finished product to you – where the raw materials were grown or extracted; whose hands tended to, crafted, and produced the materials; and the distance this product traveled to end up in your shopping cart. By knowing more about this journey, you can make informed buying decisions so that your purchases reduce negative impacts, and support the ethical and sustainable production practices that you care about.
The Origin App empowers you to make informed purchases by seeking products with known origin and to push companies to be more transparent.
Origin App users can:
• Scan, search for, or browse wood products to discover what kind of wood they contain and where it was harvested. You can browse a list of products that already have declared origin information.
• Ask companies to share origin information when it is unavailable in two ways:
- Contact the company directly through the Facebook, Twitter, email or phone links in the App; or
- Click the “I want to know the origin” button on the product page. This will alert the Environmental Investigation Agency to search for origin information on the user’s behalf. The more users that demand origin information, the more leverage EIA will have to demand origin information from companies.
• Receive notifications when the company responds to your request and shares origin information.
Because every wood product’s journey begins in the forest, through the Origin App you can push companies to provide the wood species and country of harvest that comprises the wood products you buy. This is merely the beginning of the origin story that companies should continue to tell, and demanding origin through the Origin App is just the start.
About us:
The Origin App was developed in 2020 by the Environmental Investigation Agency, Inc. (EIA), a 501(c)(3) non-profit advocacy organization based in Washington DC. For over 30 years, EIA has pioneered the use of undercover investigations and data analysis to expose environmental crime and drive change.