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Once upon a time there was a buried shore with enough waste to make it invisible, which justifies its unfortunate nickname "toilet bowl". Now the beach in Manila Bay, Philippines, is incredibly clean compared to a few months ago, a transformation so sudden and extreme that people have tears in their eyes.
The cleanup began on Jan. 27, when 5,000 volunteers descended into Manila Bay to remove more than 45 tons of waste, marking the beginning of an environmental rehabilitation campaign in the city of Manila. national scale. But about two months before the start of this massive movement, a silent revolution was already under way.
During the first week of December 2018, Bounties Network, based in Brooklyn, collected three tonnes of waste from Manila Bay during a pilot project remunerating a small network of people, mostly fishermen, for each waste cache with a digital currency based on the Ethereum system.
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For Filipino fishermen who do not usually use banks, it was a first experience with cryptocurrency. It is a tool that could be decisive in enabling poor communities around the world to take up arms in the fight against the waste of humanity, starting with the source of most of the world's ocean pollution.
There are signs that this recycling sector for digital payment may be about to take off. Earlier in September 2018, Plastic Bank, a Vancouver-based blockchain company using IBM technology, also launched a similar inaugural project. They set up a program in Naga, a town in southern Luzon, the largest island in the country, creating a permanent collection point for people to exchange plastic and recyclable materials for digital payments through of a reward system. Shaun Frankson, co-founder of Plastic Bank, says three other similar sites will open near Manila Bay in the next six months.
The fact that these two pioneers chose the Philippines as their first location is not surprising given the country's contribution to ocean waste. A study by the Wall Street Journal in 2015 found that the Philippines was the third largest emitter of plastic waste in the world's oceans, sending nearly two million tonnes of waste a year. Only China and Indonesia produce more plastic waste.
IBM researchers found that nearly 80 percent of ocean plastics in developing countries came from very poor regions. This idea could now inspire a revolution in plastic waste recycling to empower the poor in these areas. Other projects are already being organized by Bounties Network in Thailand and Indonesia and by Plastic Bank in Indonesia and Haiti, with plans for global expansion in the coming years.
The Philippines, a gifted country for the adoption of new technologies, provides the ideal setting for testing the new commercial recycling model.
The use of digital payments to combat ocean pollution is perhaps one of the most striking examples of how this new monetary world can best be used.
"Bounties Network got the Coins.ph partnership to make sure people can trade Ethereum in fiat [currency], "Explains Simona Pop, co-founder of Bounties Network.
The use of digital payments to combat ocean pollution is perhaps one of the most striking examples of how this new monetary world can best be used. In the poorest communities of the world, people often lack bank accounts, but are often the source and victims of seemingly insurmountable challenges in plastic waste.
The fishermen who helped clear the Bounties network in December brought together a world of godless rubbish – plastics, soaked mattresses, diapers, school supplies, shoes, dolls and slippers. The waste has made the bay water toxic, which remains a major challenge for the government's rehabilitation program.
Yet it is the recycling habits that digital payment programs teach these communities that will be more useful in the long run than the garbage disposal.
"It's like we're making a stone with two birds," says Christina Gallano, project technical manager, who oversaw the Bounties Network project. "We educate people and make them aware of the benefit of a clean environment as well as its long-term effects, such as a greater amount of fish."
In some cases, this means that you will save as much as 50% of the original funds that would otherwise be spent on third party fees – Simona Pop
While Bounties Network has taken a bottom-up approach, the Plastic Bank method is also attempting to engage commercial actors. "Businesses of all kinds can use our free app on their basic smartphone to manage their business and accept Plastic Bank's digital rewards as an alternative to cash payments," says Frankson. Local grocery stores or banks can manage a point-of-sale system, real-time inventory tracking, automatic reporting, secure access for staff, and instant digital receipts.
Then there is the enormous cost-saving potential generated by this disruption, which benefits both funders and operators and avoids traditional banks and their fees.
"In some cases, this means saving up to 50% of the original funds that would otherwise be spent on third party fees. That is why we have received a lot of incoming interests from important nonprofit organizations to continue this pilot project. in other places with different use cases, "explains Pop.
The two-day Bounties Network project in Manila Bay employed fishermen for about $ 2.50 per hour, nearly double the full-day wage for a minimum wage worker in the Philippines. The final bill for the cleaning amounted to 700 dollars (£ 550) for about three metric tons of waste removal; the same results achieved with the official government program would have cost $ 10,500 (£ 8,280).
This type of value is impressive no matter how you measure it. The actual transformations created by these pilot projects demonstrate that blockchain technology can have tangible benefits over money. A Manila Bay cleaner is perhaps only a beginning.
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