Sustainability is not a niche matter; it applies to everything we create and consume. Few people would associate sustainability with sports, but they have much more in common than it seems. An example? In just an average football match, eight tons of plastic are discarded. This is equivalent to 120 Lionel Messis, 8,900 football boots, or 1,111 Ballon d’Or.
No one thinks about plastic waste when cheering a goal at the top of their lungs, singing their favorite stadium song, or simply enjoying the game. Well, in reality, almost no one thinks about plastic waste at all. That’s why it becomes imperative for clubs to take responsibility for their plastic footprint before their fans do, and to find more sustainable alternatives for their plastic waste.
With this in mind, the football titan, FC Barcelona, decided to tackle this issue by creating a partnership with Plastiks to address its ecological responsibility. How? By selling unique digital collectibles that recover plastic.
Let’s break it down, because now we’re not only combining sustainability with sports but also adding Web3.
Sports and Web3?
In 2023, FC Barcelona launched Barça Vision, a platform that encompasses all the club’s initiatives associated with Web3, NFTs, and the Metaverse. Like any other business, FC Barcelona has recognized that Web3 and all its implications are here to stay. What remains is adapting business models to the new virtual structures. In this note, Plastiks appeared on its brilliant (recycled) plastic horse to offer a unique deal: the club’s first NFT collection that ensures the recovery of plastic from the environment.
The first collection features 3,000 unique NFTs, 75% of which has already been sold. The remaining 25% is waiting to be sold so the next collection can see the light.
NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens are unique virtual contracts that ensure there is only one owner of that digital product. In other words, they function like artworks, not like currencies. Now, here’s the interesting part: every time you acquire a digital collectible (NFT) from FC Barcelona x Plastiks, at least 15 kilograms of plastic are recovered from the environment.
Broadening environmental impact
While the proposal of a digital collection is novel, there are plans to expand borders with the club and offer services that have an even greater potential for environmental impact. One of the planned actions (and one of the flagship services at Plastiks) is Ticketing, through which the purchase of a ticket recovers a certain amount of plastic.
Plastiks has a very simple formula: 1 USD = 1 KG. This means that for every dollar, one kilogram of plastic is recovered from the environment. How? Plastiks sends 80% of that dollar to a plastic recovery entity, and the entity uses the money to fund its activities. Once the roadmap is complete, the recovery entity issues a Plastic Credit that is sent to the company (in this case, FC Barcelona), confirming the amount and type of plastic collected, how, when, and where. All of this is traceable thanks to the use of blockchain, and this is why the Web3 part is so crucial in this story.
Unfortunately, many companies claim to be “eco-friendly” or sustainable when, in reality, it’s nothing more than a marketing ploy to boost sales. As Plastiks wants to avoid this happening at all costs, we use blockchain technology to ensure that funds pass from one company to another without intermediaries and to record the information for each transaction on the blockchain. This provides a unique traceability and makes all transactions transparent, ensuring that the agreed amount of plastic was indeed recovered from the environment.
More fans than fish in the sea
In a time where we are beginning to envision a future with more plastic than fish in the ocean, it is imperative to take real measures to halt and reduce plastic pollution. It is essential to shrink the production and consumption of single-use plastics, to treat waste before it reaches the sea, and to educate the general population on their consumption and waste habits.
The act of partnering with major clubs like FC Barcelona goes beyond business intentions and expands to the fact that we can no longer treat sustainability as a niche matter; we must bring it into our daily lives. We must find ways to contribute sustainably in our purchases, consumption, and daily habits. Plastiks focuses on collaborating with mass-reaching companies, especially in the sports and entertainment sector, to reach as many people as possible and thus have the greatest possible environmental impact.
We thank FC Barcelona for being a pioneer in this understanding and for positioning itself on the right side of the future. We hope that this collaboration opens the doors for other clubs to join the sustainable wave and take concrete measures to offset or improve their plastic footprint.
