Do your part, use this site to check if products are Canadian

If you’re shopping with your smartphone, you can use Scanuck.com or the app Shop Canadian to make sure you’re buying Canadian alternatives to popular U.S. brands.

The website launched in February and was developed by Owen Sound resident Wil McReynolds, according to a report by Daily Hive.

This is McReynold’s second scanner-based app after making a website that can identify gluten-free products in 2016. Since launching Scanuck.com, the site has helped Canadians scan over 48,000 items.

To start using the scanner, visit the website on your phone and tap on the ‘Allow Camera Acess’ button at the top of the screen. Once you link your camera to the site, you can start scanning. Simply hold a bar code steady in the frame, and it scans automatically.

On iOS, you can add the website to your home screen so it performs like an app by pressing on the share icon in Safari and choosing the ‘Add to Home Screen’ option. On Android, it’s easier, with a large button below the scanner to easily create a shortcut.

If you know the origin of a product that’s not in the database and want to add it to the service, you can use the yellow button labelled ‘Submit Product’ on the app’s main page.

In the Daily Hive story, McReynolds mentions that he was shocked to find out that many brands advertising themselves as Canadian were actually U.S.-based. He even chose to release the scanner as a website instead of in the App Store to avoid relying on American companies for distribution.

The only U.S. portion of the project is a database he uses to help identify the products and other origins. He’s using other Canadian and French databases alongside the U.S. one.

Source: Daily Hive