Every week we’re going to be choosing our favourite idea from the ones we’ve received and explaining what we like about it.

This week, we’ve been thinking some more about the potential for a Barcode Wikipedia. Ever stood in Tescos wondering who picked your tea leaves or just where your chicken’s been? When your shampoo bottle claims to be made from ‘100% recycled materials’, what exactly does it mean? Where did the trees grow that have become your nice new bookcase?

The idea behind Barcode Wikipedia is to provide the kind of information consumers need to make informed choices. Simply scan or type in the code on your product into a mobile phone or the website directly and you could call up a wiki page which has collated data on the manufacturer, carbon footprint, related news articles, customer reviews and so forth.

Thanks to the snappily-named Global GS1 Electronic Party Information Registry, which provides the barcode data, and the kind of user-generated stuff that makes the original Wikipedia work, this tool could give the consumer unprecedented power.

What’s great about this idea is the way it uses the web to democratize access to knowledge. It creates a one-stop-shop for all the bits of data already out there that you could spend hours trawling for – you could search for a manufacturer online, search through some news articles, teach yourself about different methods of chicken rearing, but that’s really a bit too much hassle to bother with when all you want is to know why Tesco Value eggs are so much cheaper than the normal Tesco brand.

So providing a centralized way to do this makes accessing that information fast and easy. And it’s all user-generated so it harnesses the power of many minds all focused on one thing; creating a huge database of useful information. It’s a perfect example of what the web can do: if a traditional commercial or public body doesn’t give you the information you need in a meaningful format, you can just collate and create it for yourself – with the help of a few hundred thousand friends.

There are a couple of other ideas we’ve had sent in which work on the same premise. The disability map, for example, helps users create a database for themselves of all the features of buildings and facilities that might make access for someone with a disability difficult.

There’s got to be other pools of information that the web could help make more accessible, meaningful and useful to the individual in this way. Send us your suggestions.

So can you beat the Idea of the Week?

Send us your idea for a web tool to change the world.