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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 possibly have no idea by identify. Its product, the Universal Product Code, or UPC barcode, is on nearly all the things you purchase and will energy your participation in the circular economy. The unique UPC barcode remodeled purchasing within the Nineteen Seventies, first offering retail staff the flexibility for retail checkers to scan into the stock administration and level of sale methods, then later permitting self-checkout by consumers. GS1’s inside mantra is the identification of all the things makes something doable. The group’s new GS1 Digital Link Standard makes use of scannable QR codes to attach and observe merchandise, even particular particular person models produced across the entire lifecycle.
The evolution of circular products will develop on scannable codes, one thing each certainly one 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 duty for the supplies they use at each step, finally decreasing the necessity to extract uncooked supplies to decrease humanity’s environmental footprint. You can study extra about GS1 US and its know-how at https://www.gs1us.org/