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QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

theguardian.com

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Re: QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

#21

Post by jt2190 »

This is a confusing article.

Doing price lookups based on barcode-encoded identifier scanned in at the point of sale doesn’t change radically if the encoded format is a UPC or a QR code. We’re probably getting close to the point where most retailers now have POS equipment that can handle QR codes, and manufacturers can consider leaving UPC codes off of their packaging.

Outside of a point-of-sale context, you’ve always been able to look up other data based on the product identifier. Not sure how QR codes change that.

Re: QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

#22

Post by tokai »

dialup_sounds wrote: post #10
veltas wrote: post #2

>Coca-Cola has used the new generation of codes in parts of Latin America for refillable bottles, with the QR code allowing the counting of refills so that a requirement of 25 before recycling can be enforced. More tracking!

After careful consideration I've decided that I'm more concerned with the waste and pollution caused by single-use plastics than I am the privacy rights of polyethylene bottles.

Plastic bottle reuse has been done in other countries for half a century, without QR codes.

Re: QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

#23

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

frankus wrote: post #11

One of the ideas I was toying with a few years ago was a machine-readable nutrition label, but self-contained rather than involving a database lookup (there just aren't that many bits of entropy in a nutrition facts table, so it's practical to just encode it in a reasonable-size 2D barcode). I thought they could be useful for e.g. boxed lunches at a conference, or printed on a "mom and pop" restaurant menu, or in a c…

Sounds like a solution in search of a problem. To machine-read every item's nutrition label, you have to read every item, one at a time. So maybe I can find the food that doesn't contain nuts, but I still have to scan every food item first.

There's an easier way to do that: look for the label on the front that says "nut-free", or the label that says "may contain nuts" or "processed in a facility that processes nuts", or the primary ingredient that is not a nut, etc. No phone and app needed, no encoding data, anyone can do it, it's easy to find. Plus it's not easy to adopt a machine-encoding standard to changes in trends or society (like the difference between "contains nuts" and "processed in a facility that may process nuts"). We also already have OCR that can read all this text, and it's all laid out in a uniform way, so machine processing isn't that hard for existing labels.

Re: QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

#24

Post by redwall_hp »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #20
dialup_sounds wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After careful consideration I've decided that I'm more concerned with the waste and pollution caused by single-use plastics than I am the privacy rights of polyethylene bottles.

How is this not moving more responsability and work onto consumers rather than tackling the problem at the root. Coca-cola had a 2.7B EBTDA last quarter. Marketing needs to stop blowing smoke up people's rears. If they care about the environment, they can just use glass! Install mega watts of renewables to provide the power for glass recycling. Zero plastic in the environment. Companies need to stop externalizing the…

But a glass bottle weighs 10x what a plastic bottle does, resulting in significantly more fuel usage and greenhouse emissions.

PET bottles are widely recycled, at something like 90% in Norway and 80% in Japan. Versus 25-30% in the US. The issue in the US is literally that people just throw them in the trash or on the side of the road, outside of the six states that have a deposit.

Statista link, with some of the rough figures corroborated by Wikipedia:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1166550/plastic-bottle-r...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling

The issue is the lack of will, and opposition, to actually put them in a place where the materials can be recycled...and to make it cheaper (through tax incentives) to recycle the material than to use new plastic.

Those glass bottles would end up in the trash or in the road too, as things stand. It's where I already see them go most of the time. Moving from a recycling-friendly state to a southern state has been infuriating in that regard.

Re: QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

#25

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #20
dialup_sounds wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After careful consideration I've decided that I'm more concerned with the waste and pollution caused by single-use plastics than I am the privacy rights of polyethylene bottles.

How is this not moving more responsability and work onto consumers rather than tackling the problem at the root. Coca-cola had a 2.7B EBTDA last quarter. Marketing needs to stop blowing smoke up people's rears. If they care about the environment, they can just use glass! Install mega watts of renewables to provide the power for glass recycling. Zero plastic in the environment. Companies need to stop externalizing the…

It's actually a consumer choice thing. Poor countries tend to sell Coke in glass bottles because it's cheaper to run a bottle deposit program and refill them than to sell plastic that just gets thrown away. But consumers don't want glass, it breaks and it's heavy; they want disposable plastic. In fact, for decades consumers have actually bought coke from stores in plastic bags with straws, and collect the bottle deposit at purchase time. (I grew up drinking coke from plastic bags)

People need to start taking responsibility for their complicity in the world's problems, rather than blaming everyone but themselves and demanding someone else fix all their problems and pay for it too.

Re: QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

#26

Post by DoingIsLearning »

redwall_hp wrote: post #24
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not moving more responsability and work onto consumers rather than tackling the problem at the root. Coca-cola had a 2.7B EBTDA last quarter. Marketing needs to stop blowing smoke up people's rears. If they care about the environment, they can just use glass! Install mega watts of renewables to provide the power for glass recycling. Zero plastic in the environment. Companies need to stop externalizing the…

But a glass bottle weighs 10x what a plastic bottle does, resulting in significantly more fuel usage and greenhouse emissions. PET bottles are widely recycled, at something like 90% in Norway and 80% in Japan. Versus 25-30% in the US. The issue in the US is literally that people just throw them in the trash or on the side of the road, outside of the six states that have a deposit. Statista link, with some of the roug…

> more fuel usage and greenhouse emissions

Again coca-cola can make the full logistical operation EV based (bar maritime) and offset with deploying renewables. If they care.

Glass can be either washed (even more energy saving) or fully recycled, all the time, 100% of the time.

PET :

- can only be recyclable a few N cycles and becomes increasingly brittle when recycled.

- There is no such thing as transparent recycled PET

Those are the two core reasons why none of the major manufacturers actually use recycled PET or use it fractionally (10 to 30% PET, which marketing will spin with 'using (some) plastic from 100% recycled materials')

The sad story about the economics of this is that recycled PET is not nearly good quality enough to be used for packaging leading to it being used in plastic poles or road substrates and further contributing to microplastics in the waterways.

It's a scam through and through.

Re: QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

#28

Post by wakawaka28 »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #20
dialup_sounds wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After careful consideration I've decided that I'm more concerned with the waste and pollution caused by single-use plastics than I am the privacy rights of polyethylene bottles.

How is this not moving more responsability and work onto consumers rather than tackling the problem at the root. Coca-cola had a 2.7B EBTDA last quarter. Marketing needs to stop blowing smoke up people's rears. If they care about the environment, they can just use glass! Install mega watts of renewables to provide the power for glass recycling. Zero plastic in the environment. Companies need to stop externalizing the…

>they can just use glass

Does anyone even recycle glass anymore? I know it used to be a thing but I think fresh plastic bottles probably cost less than even the collection and sorting costs for glass. I haven't seen any recycler ask for glass in ages.

>Companies need to stop externalizing their costs into environmental problems and telling people it's their problem for buying it.

They are just giving people what they want at a price they can pay. If you really want to minimize waste, the way to go is probably for people to make their own soda at home using flavor extracts. It's easy and probably less polluting to do this than anything else. But when you're not at home, you have to have drinks ready-made.

Re: QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

#29

Post by siwyd »

They speak of "QR-style" barcodes, but it's very unclear to me whether GS1 is actively pushing QR or DataMatrix as the preferred 2D barcode style. In medical devices and pharmaceuticals, both the 1D and 2D DataMatrix GS1 barcodes have been used extensively for quite some time so I would personally think DataMatrix is the way to go. I'm just a casual observer though. Is there anybody here that has more inside knowledge on what the game plan is?

Re: QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'

#30

Post by wakawaka28 »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #25
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not moving more responsability and work onto consumers rather than tackling the problem at the root. Coca-cola had a 2.7B EBTDA last quarter. Marketing needs to stop blowing smoke up people's rears. If they care about the environment, they can just use glass! Install mega watts of renewables to provide the power for glass recycling. Zero plastic in the environment. Companies need to stop externalizing the…

It's actually a consumer choice thing. Poor countries tend to sell Coke in glass bottles because it's cheaper to run a bottle deposit program and refill them than to sell plastic that just gets thrown away. But consumers don't want glass, it breaks and it's heavy; they want disposable plastic. In fact, for decades consumers have actually bought coke from stores in plastic bags with straws, and collect the bottle depo…

Plastic bags make sense when people are carrying all their groceries on foot from the store to their homes. If the same people had to put their groceries in a car to be jostled about, I bet they wouldn't like their liquids in bags that can leak and leave a mess in their expensive cars.

I think a lot of people like glass, but I haven't seen a recycler want it in a long time. So is it more responsible to buy glass that you know is going in the trash, or plastic that might be recycled? It's not obvious.

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