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Meet Vivian Tai, Director of Innovation at GS1 US, the American division of GS1, a nonprofit group you work together with every day and doubtless have no idea by identify. Its product, the Universal Product Code, or UPC barcode, is on just about every part you purchase and will energy your participation in the circular economy. The authentic UPC barcode remodeled procuring within the Seventies, first offering retail staff the flexibility for retail checkers to scan into the stock administration and level of sale programs, then later permitting self-checkout by customers. GS1’s inner mantra is the identification of every part makes something doable. The group’s new GS1 Digital Link Standard makes use of scannable QR codes to attach and monitor merchandise, even particular particular person items produced across the entire lifecycle.
The evolution of circular products will develop on scannable codes, one thing each one in every of us with a cellphone in our pocket. The mixture of a smartphone and QR code might unlock closed-loop recycling to make sure that firms who make or distribute merchandise and packaging can take accountability for the supplies they use at each step, in the end decreasing the necessity to extract uncooked supplies to decrease humanity’s environmental footprint. You can study extra about GS1 US and its expertise at https://www.gs1us.org/
