WeChat, one of the world’s most popular mobile apps and social networks, brought home iF Gold Award for its smart retail innovation, Scan & Go. It is     1     first ever Chinese product to win gold in the iF Service Design category.

Scan & Go enables shoppers at retail stores to turn    2     (they) mobile phones into a virtual checkout counter. When shopping, customers use their mobile phones     3     (scan) product barcodes, view product information, get discounts, complete self-checkout, and pay     4     (direct) within the app via WeChat Pay. There is no queuing up at the cash register. “This concept     5     (show) a customer-centric scan-and-go-solution for an optimized (充分利用的) shopping and retail context. All standards of the good user experience     6     (meet) in this service design, including touchless access, efficiency or ease-of-use in scanning of market products and the final payment and checkout. This is user-friendly design at its     7     (good),” says iF Gold Award in its Gold Statement to Scan & Go.

According to statistics, sales during peak hours in     8     (tradition) supermarkets account for 60% of total turnover, and     9     average customers spend three to five minutes on queuing and payment during peak hours. With Scan & Go, customers no longer have to queue, and the payment time     10     (shorten) to one minute.

On my way home from work yesterday, I     1     (stop) off at a local supermarket. Among other things, I wanted to buy a couple of     2     (coconut). When I picked them up, I was     3     (amaze) that each coconut was wrapped in clear, thin plastic. Supermarkets want to make sure that coconuts reach the consumer in the     4     (good) condition. The packaging helps to keep the product fresh; it means the product will last longer.

I understand that, but in this case it’s     5     (complete) wasteful and unnecessary. It already has its own     6     (nature) packaging. It’s got a tough shell that’s almost impossible to break!

I really believe we should do away with packaging completely. There is     7     supermarket in Germany that has no product packaging at all. Its customers take refillable containers with them when     8     (shop), and use them instead of plastic boxes and bags.