From sellers' screens to buyers' screens: Screen-to-Screen Smartphone App to digitize all types of print receipts, invoices and paper documents for sustainability and green development

Billions of purchasing receipts, invoices and bills are printed every year worldwide. Manufacturing paper and printing involve large quantities of natural resources (trees, water and energy) while producing large amounts of chemical pollutants and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. If visual smartphone-scannable codes (VSC) can be developed to encrypt and store large amounts of texts such as purchasing receipts and invoices, and if a smartphone application (App) is developed to scan such codes “from screen-to-screen” (sellers’ screens to buyers’ screens), substantial amounts of environmental resources can be saved and considerable amounts of chemical pollutants and green gas emissions can be avoided. For this purpose, a smartphone App, called “Screen-to-Screen” (STS) is proposed to transfer purchasing receipts and invoices directly from sellers’ monitor displays (i.e., supermarkets, stores, restaurants, pharmacies, etc.) to customer smartphones’ screens without the need to print them anymore. Customers should need only to scan visual scannable codes (VSC) that encrypt purchasing details to convert them into digital formats on the customers’ smartphones screens. As a result, significant amounts of energy, trees, and water can be protected, and important amounts of environmental wastes and chemicals (inks, plastics) used in paper manufacturing and printing can be saved for more vital needs than for printing.