Ma Jun's years as an environmental activist taught him this lesson: If you want factories to clean up their act, shaming them in front of Apple Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. works better than government fines. Ma's strategy, backed financially by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s charitable arm, is to scrape real-time data off government websites that compile readings from effluent monitoring equipment at some 13,000 of the worst water polluters. The software aggregates the data on an app called Blue Map, where the public can easily identify wrongdoers. Factories caught polluting face repercussions. Disclosure by Ma's nonprofit organization has caused some to be banished from Apple's supplier list, denied a desired credit rating for their bonds, or even deprived of bank loans.
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