We would like to start this week’s newsletter by thanking all our subscribers who have joined our journey in the last four months. This week we have launched our first monthly blockchain for sustainability trends report, which reflects the growing momentum in the adoption of blockchain for sustainability initiatives.
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This week we have added 10 blockchain for sustainability projects to our database which now has ~290 projects1.
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Biodiversity
Tracking tree plantation on blockchain | Canada
Project Description: Tree plantation or afforestation is one of the ways to counter the harmful impact of GHG emissions. However, tracking tree plantations, especially those done on a massive scale, can be very challenging for companies, in addition to verifying the sequestered carbon and reporting it. To counter and essentially solve these challenges, Sport Chek (Canadian Tire Corporation) has partnered with Veritree, to plant one million trees across Canada by the end of 2023, under its tree-restoration initiative. The company will be using Veritree’s blockchain-based solution to manage, monitor, verify, and track the projects’ regenerative impact over time. Blockchain would be used to track and trace the tree plantation and all the project-related information would be stored on the blockchain as it provides security, immutability, and transparency in data storing and data sharing. The company would be able to access the date of planting, CO2 sequestration, caretaker details, and species of the tree, in real-time. The company will be aiming for restoration projects as a part of tree plantation, which includes, post-fire restoration in Cariboo, British Columbia, a post-logging reforestation site in Sackville, New Brunswick, and several other projects. These regenerative initiatives will help to repair damaged ecosystems, revitalize habitats, enhance biodiversity, and provide effective natural carbon sinks, which will be verified through the blockchain.
Expected Benefits:
Blockchain would improve the life span of the trees through real-time tracking.
Blockchain would provide the required immutability in the carbon sequestration data, to eliminate data manipulation and greenwashing.
This project will encourage other companies to organize tree-plantation drives.
More Information: PR Web
Incentivizing tree plantation through blockchain | Canada
Project Description: Tree plantation has been proven to be a successful measure against GHG emissions. However, planting and managing a tree is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process, discouraging many potential planters to do so. This creates a demand to incentivize tree plantation, so that the average consumer would be encouraged to plant a tree, and take care of it. To do this, WoodCoin Foundation has developed a blockchain-based solution under the name, WoodLandEco, that will enable users to sponsor a tree, right from seed plantation to full growth and further. Users would need to choose from a variety of tree species on the application, each having its properties and amount of oxygen produced. Users can connect their tree via QR code. This solution will also incentivize the users who sponsor the tree plantation by providing dividends, in lieu of the oxygen that the tree produces. To do this, the company is leveraging blockchain technology. The dividends or tokens issued would be minted on the blockchain network, for a secure, inexpensive, and immutable financial transaction, giving its users motivation to plant more trees. This solution is based on the Logarithmic Bitcoin blockchain, which will yield increasing rewards to the users as the blockchain matures. All the data generated from the trees, including the financial transaction, would be stored on the blockchain network, eliminating any data manipulation and fraudulent activity.
Expected Benefits:
This solution would convert a tree into a dividend-generating asset, encouraging more and more users to plant.
Blockchain would eliminate greenwashing.
Companies can use this channel to deploy their CSR funds, without worrying about reporting the data.
More Information: Digital Journal
Saving biodiversity through blockchain | Estonia
Project Description: Carbon credits are great instruments for companies that want to offset their carbon footprint. However, current carbon credits do not factor in biodiversity loss, which is a major setback for current carbon credits. In addition to this, double counting, greenwashing, and price differentiation also acts as challenges in the legacy carbon trading marketplace. To address these challenges, Single.Earth has created a blockchain-based security token, MERIT, to bridge the gap between donors and biological projects. The token creates new opportunities to rapidly and transparently slow down deforestation on a global scale. Single.Earth creates a digital twin on the blockchain network, mimicking the carbon removal and storage, water purification, and biodiversity of the real land. This will help the company to finalize a token value for the land, based on which, tokens will be issued. All this data, including the financial data of the token transactions, will be deployed on the blockchain for easy, secure, and immutable data storing and sharing, eliminating any third-party or fraudulent activity and data manipulation.
Expected Benefits:
The tokens will incentivize landowners to preserve their biodiversity forests.
The digitization of these credits will eliminate double counting, greenwashing, and price manipulation.
This platform will provide access to a nature-based service market to small landowners to whom the carbon credit was out of reach.
More Information: EIN Newswire
Encouraging reforestation initiatives through blockchain | Brazil
Project Description: Afforestation and reforestation are proven methods to curtail GHG emissions. However, tree plantation requires a lot of resources and time commitment to maintain and operate. This discourages many potential donors or tree planters to get involved. This presents an opportunity to encourage donors to actively participate in tree plantation drives. To do this, AmaGroup has created MetAmazonia, a blockchain-based crowdfunding platform, enabling donors and philanthropists to fund rainforest management and development. MetAmazonia offers a digital twin of Amazonian forests through a 3D, real-time, and gamified crowdfunding platform where users can own NFTs, which are pegged 1:1 with real-life land in the Amazon Forest. These NFTs will bridge the financial gap between donors and reforestation initiatives. This project is financially backed by TDeFi, a crypto-focused incubator. A DAO will be used to manage the virtual lands, oversee the strategy of the metaverse through a voting process, and distribute revenue throughout the entire ecosystem. A DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization, built on top of a blockchain network that improves governance and brings democracy to decision-making. DAOs facilitate fast and unbiased decision-making driven by smart contracts that result in transparency for all stakeholders involved. Users would be able to access 20,000 individual plots of land, each equaling 1 hectare. Blockchain will enable real-time access to the Amazon rainforest and all the data, including the NFTs (financial data), would be stored on the blockchain network for an easy and secure data sharing experience.
Expected Benefits:
This project would increase traction in reforestation initiatives, ensuring adequate liquidity.
Blockchain would eliminate any third-party or middlemen from the fund-raising process, ensuring optimum fund transfer.
Through a decentralized platform, users will have full transparency over fund allocation.
More Information: Nature World News
Sustainable Agriculture
Sustainable agriculture using blockchain, robotics, and AI | United States
Project Description: Farming is considered a major revenue-generating activity for most developing countries. However, the increased use of chemical fertilizers, in addition to pesticides, herbicides, and over-dependence on natural resources, have tainted this industry, as these opens consumer up to various health risks, in addition to harming the soil. This creates an opportunity for use of sustainable agricultural methods, creating a circular economy in this industry. SELF Labs is partnering with Beyond Imagination to develop agricultural grow boxes, using humanoids, blockchain, renewable energy, and game technology. Beyond Imagination will provide the humanoids (human-based robotics) in this project. Each box will be equipped with solar panels, windmills, atmosphere water generators, and AI. Each grow box will be connected to a SELF Labs-powered trivia-based simulation game called Cultivate Coin, which allows users to choose a role, learn about farming and the growing process, earn rewards, and part in the growing process virtually. Blockchain will be used to tokenize the in-game rewards, encouraging users to stay active in the game. All the data proceed during this project would get deployed on SELF Chain, SELF Labs private blockchain, eliminating any kind of data manipulation during the operations.
Expected Benefits:
With the use of renewable energy sources, these grow boxes are self-sufficient and don’t need external intervention, paving way for a circular economy.
Using a gaming ecosystem, this project encourages users to consume sustainably-produced agriculture products.
The company can command a premium on the produce from the grow box.
More Information: Scoop New Zealand
Funding regenerative agriculture initiatives through NFTs | Turkey
Project Description: Denim is a durable, tough, and long-lasting material, hence the penetration of this material in the fashion industry is very deep. However, the dyes used to produce this material are a major source of water pollution, and the cotton used to produce this fabric consumes a lot of water. According to Levi's, one pair of jeans consumes 3,781 liters of water, equivalent to 3 days' worth of one US household's water needs. This presents an opportunity for companies to promote regenerative agriculture practices, to decrease their environmental footprint. ORTA is doing the same by collaborating with Muse VR. The companies are launching an NFT collection, under the name 'The Blueskyer NFT', featuring ORTA's commitment to promoting regenerative agriculture and conscious consumption. The NFTs are minted on an eco-friendly blockchain network, Tezos. According to their website, Tezos uses an energy-efficient proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, producing an average carbon footprint of only 17 people after 50 million transactions. ORTA will be donating the profits from the NFT collection to support regenerative agriculture in Turkey. Blockchain would enable the company to directly transfer funds from NFT buyers to eco-friendly initiatives in Turkey, eliminating any third-party intrusion and middlemen. These NFTs will be launched on the Rarible NFT marketplace.
Expected Benefits:
NFT will bridge the financial gap between donors and eco-friendly projects.
This project will reduce the friction in the eco-friendly projects, increasing their liquidity.
Other textile companies would be encouraged to implement regenerative agriculture into their production.
A sustainable change in materials like denim, which is having a deep penetration in the industry, can create a major impact on the overall industry's environmental footprint.
More Information: Rivet, Levi’s and Tezos
Community Health
Curtailing fraud in luxury liquor using blockchain | Cambodia
Project Description: Consuming fake and counterfeit food products can cause serious health issues to the consumer. One of the most counterfeited beverages is hard liquor, due to its cheap raw material availability and easy-to-manufacture nature. This becomes an even more serious problem in the luxury liquor segment, where the consumer expects and demands a high-quality product. To curtail the intrusion of fraud in this industry, Attwood Import and Export is partnering with VeChainThor to create a proprietary blockchain-based tracking and tracing solution. A customized NFC-based sticker, named 'Attwood Blockchain Sticker' (ABS), is developed by the companies to track Attwood’s luxury alcohol product line, using the VeChainThor blockchain. By applying ABS to each bottle of product, Attwood will enhance its liquor distribution capabilities, which will drastically improve transparency, and guarantee product authenticity to partners and consumers. With key data hashed on the blockchain, critical product information becomes immutable and trustworthy, allowing clients and customers to verify the origin and authenticity of products with a simple scan of a smartphone, preventing fraud and protecting consumers.
Expected Benefits:
By providing verified and authentic data, this project will eventually decrease counterfeited liquor’s share in the industry.
By using blockchain, the company can prevent inconsistent quality, which would increase consumers’ trust.
Blockchain would enable secure and immutable communication between all the relevant stakeholders in the supply chain
More Information: PR Newswire
Secure healthcare data sharing on blockchain | United States
Project Description: Many hospitals and clinics around the world are still dependent on inefficient and incumbent legacy systems to establish patient identity. Numerous technical and business complexities, cost, competition, and privacy issues are some of the major shortcomings of this system. These flaws in the data sharing process can compromise the timely healthcare received by the patient, hampering their health. To overcome these challenges, the College of Medicine, Drexel University has teamed up with MAPay to leverage blockchain technology to protect identity, and securely share patients’ healthcare data. The partnership will be using NFTs to share this data across relevant stakeholders. The MAPay patient data vault NFTs, which use the Algorand blockchain, store verifiable patient information and provide a more complete healthcare history to care teams and health services. The said data is stored in a secure and immutable ledger and provides interoperability for inter-administration data sharing. In addition to this, NFT minting would be energy efficient because of Algorand. According to their website, the protocol uses a pure proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which is highly energy efficient as compared to its counterpart proof-of-work and the protocol is also buying the equivalent carbon credits to offset its footprint.
Expected Benefits:
This project will make credentialing the health care data provide an easy and seamless process.
Hospitals need not worry about data manipulation in health records due to blockchain.
More Information: PYMNTS and Algorand
Ensuring authentic halal food through blockchain | Malaysia, China
Project Description: While meat consumption is rising year on year, companies must implement a reliant and trustworthy supply chain practice. The halal method in the food industry refers to the permissible or lawful way of preparing food and drinks according to Islamic law. Due to religious reasons, the enormous market of Muslims consciously seeks trusted, halal-certified sources when they buy food. In addition to this, an opaque supply chain facilitates the intrusion of contaminated meat products, hampering consumers’ health. To address this, Huawei Malaysia has signed a tripartite MoU with Halal Development Corp Bhd (HDC) and Duriemas Sdn Bhd, to digitize the halal industry. Halal Development Corp Bhd (HDC) will be administering, marketing, and liaising with the government and Duriemas Sdn Bhd will establish operational efficiency. The objective of this collaboration is to ensure food track and trace throughout the halal ecosystem, and quality assurance. All the halal products' supply chain data would be stored on the blockchain network, developed by Huawei. This solution would enable HDC’s suppliers to track their product line, in real-time and securely share this data among relevant stakeholders. All data can be verified for credibility as it will be stored on a blockchain, giving Muslims confidence and assurance that they consume only food prepared according to Islamic principles. The project will be implementing this track and trace system onto the Chinese Exporting line.
Expected Benefits:
A transparent supply chain would enable the company to detect unconsumable food items, ensuring quality standards throughout the supply chain.
The company could command a higher premium on the product, which the consumer is willing to pay.
This collaboration will drive competitive advantage and opportunities for local companies to accelerate the local digital economy.
More Information: The Malaysian Reserve
Corruption
Blockchain enabling smart policing | India
Project Description: Undigitized processes in public service institutions such as police departments can compromise operational efficiency and also make way for document mismanagement, which is critical in every police case. This can breed corruption and bribery, leading to trust erosion among the public. This presents an opportunity for police departments to introduce reliant and transparent operational processes. To speed up the process, Goa Police in India has signed an MoU with 5ire, to implement a smart policing solution in their crime branch office at Ribandar, Goa, India. Through this collaboration, the MoU aims to create a public-private partnership between 5ire and Goa Police to improve transparency and efficiency in policing, which will help streamline procedures and will provide stakeholders access to information related to cases. The blockchain solution is developed by 5ire, which can record all official activities to allow police to help the citizens with traceability to their records and evidence. Moreover, blockchain technology can help create smart policing solutions for Goa Police and aims to make the processes online eco-friendly and efficient. All the physical evidence will have a digital copy on the blockchain, including point of authority and operational trail, eliminating any illicit activity and heavy paper trail. All other governmental operations want to be going online, this will further speed up the process.
Expected Benefits:
Blockchain will ensure full control over the physical evidence.
Blockchain will ensure immutable record keeping, which is crucial for policing activity.
Blockchain will eliminate favors and corruption activity.
This project will enable the police to make data-driven decisions.
More Information: Financial Express
Disclaimer: The information in this newsletter does not constitute investment or professional advice and investors and other users of this newsletter should not rely on it for investment or other purposes. While we have taken due care and caution in the compilation and presentation of the information and data in this report, no warranty is made as to the completeness, accuracy, or utility of this analysis. Users are also advised to review the detailed disclaimer, terms of use, and privacy policy on our website.