The secret weapon in the fight for sustainability? The humble barcode

The global economy is driven by the flow of goods – from farm to fork, field to factory, weaving machine to wardrobe. While consumers and governments demand more sustainability, brands and manufacturers are struggling to make the digital transformation. The good news is that GS1, the standards organization that manages the humble yet incredibly important barcode that appears on every consumer product, is coming to the rescue. A new standard called GS1 Digital Link has just been released. It upgrades the omnipresent barcode standard so that every individual product can now have a web address. What’s more, the upgraded codes are scannable by any smartphone, meaning that more than two billion smartphones around the world can connect with products to both access and share information.