I came across an interesting website, http://www.alonovo.com offering an "intelligent marketplace" where you can purchase a variety of consumer products but also send a clear message to businesses - "we want blue skies, clean water, a fair and growing economy, intelligent use of our natural resources, safe and humane workplaces and sensible partnerships with local communities."

The foundation of alonovo.com is a database that continuously receives data about the practices of manufacturers and merchants, as well as product quality information. Derived from this database is The Social-Responsibility Index, or SRI is a rating of business character or citizenship. The SRI is comprised of a rating within multiple areas including:

• Interaction with the local community
  
  
• Ethics and Governance
  
  
• Clean Manufacturing/Pollution
  
  
• SRI of Parent Entity
  
  
• Workers Rights, Safety and Satisfaction
  
  
• Opportunity and Fairness (Non-Discriminatory Practices)
  
  
• Animal Testing
  
  
• Philanthropy and Volunteerism
  
  
• Political Influence and Lobbying Activity (Company and Board)
  
  
• Supply Chain Service Level and Control Global Business Practices and Labor Standards)
  
  
• Attrition due to international manufacturing or labor-force relocation (off shoring and US facilities closures)
  
  
• Alternative/Clean/Reusable energy policies and practices
  
  

The SRI helps you buy products from companies that exemplify socially responsible and sustainable practices.

The sources of alonovo.com's ratings data include KLD Research & Analyics, Inc. and the Federal Elections Commission. Eventually available data will be aggregated from government agencies and NGO's (such as the Federal Elections Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Labor and other government entities).

You are able to personalize the system by designating issues important to you and weight them according to your individual values. This impacts the overall Value Ratings of the various merchants helping you make informed buying decision.

Beyond helping to shape social, environmental and political practices of businesses, alonovo.com puts its own money where its mouth is by contributing 20% of its revenue to the non-profit organization you designate as your beneficiary.

The site also offers a number of forums for consumers to communicate and blogs from notable members of the alonovo.com community and the CSR movement in general. Included are:

• Dr. John Tepper Marlin, CityEconomist.com
  
  
• George A. Polisner, alonovo.com
  
  
• Professor Charles Derber Boston College
  
  
• Professor Dara O'Rourke UC Berkeley
  
  
• United for a Fair Economy
  
  
• Suzanne Stenson O'Brien Executive Director Center for Civic Participation
  
  
• Betsy Leondar-Wright: Tax Reform Tango: More Shrink, Shift and Shaft by Anisha Desai and Chuck Collins
  
  

This consolidation of Corporate Social Responsible blogs and newsfeeds are in itself a great resource.

From George Polisner's blog:

"By shifting to a social values shopping paradigm, when we spend our money for products and services -by ensuring that our money does not perpetuate poor labor conditions, pollution, corruption and political influence -instead we will buy (or, at a minimum maintain an affinity for) products and services from businesses that our evolving to embody a proper and sustainable balance."

And from Professor Charles Derber of Boston College blog:

"The most important and dangerous things that corporations are doing are off the radar screen of CSR as we currently know it. They involve the uses and abuses of corporate political power - and the incestuous marriage between corporations and an increasingly Orwellian state ... Corpocracy is authoritarian rule by a corporate/political oligarchy in the name of democracy.

The main aim of CSR must be to unmask and undo corpocracy. Only this shift in paradigm can make CSR relevant to our central crisis: preserving democracy in the face of unprecedented concentration of capital and creeping fascism. While the need for this new focus might seem obvious to those not caught up in CSR, it is never discussed within mainstream CSR discourse. CSR, a way of thinking largely developed by business itself, shifts the spotlight toward everything but the central problem: the unaccountable political power that global corporations exercise."