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We facilitate the shift to a circular economy by digitising and tracing materials across complex supply chains on a public blockchain without risking confidentiality.
About
Increasingly, customers, companies, and regulators want to understand where their products come from, what they are made of, where they will end up, and how they might impact the environment over time. Still, getting the full picture of the value chain immediately raises concerns around trust, privacy and confidentiality as the available data on the materials is often proprietary, not accessible or incomplete. Thus, end-to-end value chain transparency and traceability holds the key to overcoming the challenges that society faces in the implementation of a circular economy which includes more efficient waste management and recovery of resources. Circularise has developed a blockchain-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that provides transparency and traceability to enable the transition towards a circular economy. We support businesses, governments, and consumers. Our technology enables traceability of materials and products to share and verify origins, certificates, carbon footprint and/or any other associated data. This ultimately translates to understanding bill of material (BoM) information to support increased recycling rates and improved resource use. Tracing, however, is just the first step. Sharing product information to inform data-based decisions is the second. This is a core USP of Circularise and our ‘Smart-Questioning' patent-pending technology. This allows all actors in the value chain to share sensitive or proprietary product and material information without risking data privacy, confidentiality or anonymity. Moreover, through an open protocol approach that supports the standardisation of data structure, our platform adheres to regulations that require interoperability and openness of data. This is in line with what many industry leaders believe to be the best approach to transform our current means of production and consumption. How it works: each batch of material is digitised on the blockchain by creating a digital copy called ‘digital twin’. This digital twin carries all relevant information regarding a specific batch (e.g. environmental footprint and/or origin) that is further updated by the parties along the supply chain who mimic and reflect the manufacturing processes of the entire product’s lifecycle.
Key Benefits
Currently, companies share information through self-reporting and paper-based systems, which is inefficient, not scalable, and susceptible to fraud. A lengthy PDF-exchange process between all the stakeholders involved in the production of any good occurs when firms want to provide proof of their sustainable production activities (e.g. the use of recycled materials or the aggregated carbon footprint of their product). This process is time-consuming and error-prone causing a decrease in competitiveness throughout entire supply chains. We believe in the power of digitisation to provide relevant, accurate, and trustworthy data that will drive collaboration between entities towards more responsible means of production and consumption. By equipping brands and manufacturers (B2B) with technology to prove the provenance of recycled or sustainably sourced materials, our solution allows organizations to create new revenue streams by placing a ‘responsible sourcing’ premium on end-products. Moreover, tracing assets such as raw materials, waste, and recycled materials has the potential to boost recycling, improve resource use, open new markets for secondary raw materials, and advance the transition to a circular economy.
Applications
Tracking and tracing of any material or sustainability metric along complex supply chains in the electronics, automotive, FMCG, household appliances, and textiles sectors.