From an idea to launching a solution to the global waste challenge
THE EMERGENCE OF THE EMPOWERCHAIN
In 2018 Empower was started with the purpose to see how blockchain technology and digitization could help solve the global plastic waste problem.
Globally, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled. This means that we waste hundreds of billion $ worth of materials and trillions of $ worth of products every year. After 100 years with a linear economy where stakeholders are siloed with no responsibility for what happens outside their own part of the value chain, it is now a huge lack of both waste collection and recycling infrastructure and collection data. This makes the shift towards a circular economy very hard and time-consuming, while at the same time it is increasingly prevalent that the systems we use to manage our resources must undergo a complete transformation to a circular economy.
The Empower Global Plastic Waste Deposit & Tracking System is based on the same philosophy as the Norwegian plastic bottle deposit system with reverse vending machines. This system turns waste into resources by giving plastic bottles an enhanced value beyond the material itself. This way it crowdsources collection and segregation at source efficiently. The outcome is that 98% of all plastic bottles in Norway are recycled.
Empower aims to stop the leakage of plastic and other waste into the environment by cost-efficiently incentivizing collection and segregation at source, and at scale, by giving value to used materials and products everywhere.
The Empower Platform allows anyone to register on the Empower Platform to digitally set up verified collection points around the world. These Collection Points can then issue financial rewards in the form of digital tokens in return for the deposit of plastic or other “waste”. Empower does not take ownership of collected materials or data, but helps the local collection entrepreneurs to get access to both funding for cleanups and potential buyers of the collected materials. This way we create a rapidly growing, global, and distributed waste collection infrastructure as well as entrepreneurs and sustainable jobs within the waste management industry.
To further boost the capabilities, scalability, and impact of the Empower Platform the Empower team has been working to put the learnings and experiences from operating within the full value chain, including grass root informal sector, in more than 40 countries over the last 4 years to work. This is done by launching the Empowerchain, the digital infrastructure for a circular economy, its native $MPWR token, standardized recycling incentive tokens like $PCRD (Plastic Credits), and customizable incentive tokens like the EMP (the Empower B2C Proof of Contribution token). The EmpowerChain is built to enhance a tried and tested concept that revolutionizes profitable plastic waste removal and enables a circular economy.
