Blockchain: The new kid on the social impact block
This article was originally posted by Laura Francois, our Sustainability officer, you can find the original article below:
https://medium.com/@laurafrancois/blockchain-the-new-kid-on-the-social-impact-block-1a764a905023
Whether you’re a blockchain lover, hater, believer or total skeptic, no-one can deny that ‘something’ has happened. For those only recently tuning in to the phenomena (like myself), here’s a recap.
Blockchain is a technology, not a metaphor for the magic of the future, or the new filler word to ensure your networking jargon is on point. Here is a brief and watered down explanation of what the technology does. Blockchain is a sequence of files, each one capturing a snapshot of the previous one and storing those files on many many computers worldwide. The wow element is the fact that whatever information is on the chain cannot be tampered with or changed. Once it’s on there, it’s for life. The potential of this technology points to a future of integrity, a concrete way to validate information.
Blockchain technology is essentially proposing a new system of trust, finally a world where information comes with assurance! The possibilities seem endless. Imagine buying a t-shirt and being able to clearly understand where the cotton was picked, which ginning and dying facility it entered and which cut and sew factory it was dispatched from! The truth about today’s supply chains from the clothing we wear to the coffee we drink, and the device you’re reading this post on, is that they’re a total mess. Most brands can only tell you the bare minimum and can’t seem to navigate the opaque and fragmented story of their own production.
In Bangladesh alone, where fashion brands flock to produce our clothing cheaply, there are over 7,000 undocumented factories. These are informal and unregulated, and generally the most dangerous. They fall outside any protection a brand might offer its workers. Ask any of those brands, and the majority of them will have no idea that their stock is being produced in this “shadow factories”.
For supply chains in all industries, blockchain points to a potential future where unregulated and abusive systems will fall to the wayside. Ideally a future with blockchain is a future with less middlemen, clearer production standards and transparency as a mandate. The time has finally come for all of us, as consumers, to finally have the proverbial shades lifted from our eyes to bask in the cold hard truth behind the products we buy. Transparency means consumers taking control of the wheel and making an educated vote with our dollar. But Spiderman wasn’t kidding, with greater power (and information) does come greater responsibility. Are we willing to take it?
The truth is, we’re still far from this being a reality. There is one important flaw in this entire equation. How do you get people to input the ‘truth’ onto the blockchain in the first place? Sure, data on the blockchain can’t be tampered, but how to ensure this data has integrity in the first place? It’s too soon, for now, to tell how the technology will develop for industries that thrive on unregulated production methods, and middlemen.
What does blockchain mean for your t-shirt or chocolate bar?
Read more here.
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