It has been in use since May of last year: the new reusable transport box that GS1 Germany developed together with partners from industry and trade. Currently, 100,000 boxes in the consumer goods segment are used in a closed pool to transport articles from the producers to the central warehouses of the retail partners. From there, they are delivered back to the suppliers for refilling via the pooling service provider IPP GmbH.

This circular economy replaces the one-way system of disposable packaging that is disposed of after a single use. And it makes the constant packing and repacking of items along the entire supply chain unnecessary in many cases. It also supports the increasing automation of retail warehouses. By using the standardized GS1 Smart Box, logistics processes can be optimized in such a way that up to 20 % of logistics costs are saved in this chain. This has been confirmed in practice over the past few months.

Does the use of the GS1 Smart Box cause less CO² emissions than disposable transport packaging? After all, the empty boxes have to be transported to the pooling service provider after use. There, they are cleaned, inspected and returned to the producer. The experts of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg/Germany (ifeu) have determined all equivalent CO2 emissions caused during the entire life cycle of the GS1 Smart Box – from raw material extraction to the use phase to the recycling process – and compared them with those of a disposable solution. Result: In the average scenario, the GS1 Smart Box emits up to 35 % less CO2 than a disposable box.