Ocean plastic is a huge problem. The blockchain could be part of the solution.

The oceans of the world are flooded with plastic and the problem is only getting worse. Each year, 8 million tonnes of plastic debris end up in the oceans, adding to the 150 million tonnes already present in marine environments. Debris grips seabirds, starves whales and seeps into the entire marine food chain – including humans – when we eat seafood.

Recently, significant efforts have been made to remove plastic debris already present in the oceans. Efforts to prevent plastic from entering the oceans are less well known.

A particularly promising bank, a non-profit bank based in Vancouver, British Columbia, called Plastic Bank, promotes plastic recycling in developing countries – disproportionately contributing to the problem of ocean plastics – through a system based on the blockchain tuition, cooking oil and other goods and services.

Plastic waste is a particular problem in poor countries because they often lack a reliable waste management system. In some countries, large tracts of land are now covered with bottles, sacks and other plastic debris, many of which eventually end up in rivers and eventually end up in the ocean. According to a recent study, 90% of plastic debris in the ocean comes from 10 rivers, eight in Asia and two in Africa.

"We need to stop the plastic from entering the ocean," said David Katz, co-founder of Plastic Bank. "And to do that, we have to go to the most infiltrated areas in the ocean and do what we can.

Thus, Plastic Bank went to Haiti and set up about 40 recycling centers where the plastic is exchanged not for money – which could be vulnerable to small theft that is a problem in many parts of the country – but for cryptocurrency, which is largely stolen. evidence. A blockchain platform developed in partnership with IBM records transactions in an encrypted digital ledger, where the digital tokens are placed into an account via a mobile phone application and then used to make purchases.

The system "ensures that the right person gets the right amount at the right time," said Shaun Frankson, the other co-founder of Plastic Bank, "When you extract money, you increase the value that it brings to communities without adding danger. "

Plastic collectors in Haiti are getting a higher price than the market price, which can reach $ 5 a day – a living wage in a country where the average citizen lives on $ 2 a day, according to the World Bank. With time, they can accumulate credits and get low interest loans – a rare opportunity in a country where citizens often have no birth certificate or even last name.

Jim Leape, co-director of the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford University, welcomes the initiative to fight poverty and the plastic problem. "It's part of this equation that we urgently need to solve," he said.

Since opening the first center in Haiti in 2015, Plastic Bank has absorbed the equivalent of more than 100 million plastic bottles. Plastic is turned into flakes or pellets, then exported to other countries, where it is used to make new products.

Plastic Bank is now expanding in the Philippines, Brazil and Indonesia. The goal is to have centers wherever there is an abundance of poverty and plastic waste.

"We know that poverty persists and that the regions most affected by poverty are the ones that contribute the most to the problem of plastics," Katz said. "The beauty of this is that we use a problem to solve each other."

Nevertheless, the effort is not without challenges. One of the most important is to find customers willing to buy the plastic collected by Plastic Bank. "But if end users, such as consumer brands and, ultimately, consumers, are willing to pay a higher price for plastics collected by Plastic Bank, this is an opportunity for their market," Rob said. Kaplan, CEO of Circulate Capital, a Brooklyn-based investment management company focused on finding solutions to the problem of ocean plastics.

To encourage potential buyers, Plastic Bank has dubbed "social plastic" to allow manufacturers who buy plastic to put the case on product labels, much like coffee, cotton, and other agricultural products. fair".

"It gives the consumer the opportunity to participate, just by buying something," said Katz.

Despite all the potential of Plastic Bank, Katz and other experts say it will not be enough to save the world's oceans from the continual flood of plastic waste. Prohibitions on plastic bags and straws could help, as well as a greater awareness of the problem by consumers.

"The huge spill of plastics made us realize that the decisions we make every day in coffee shops and grocery stores are reflected in our oceans on a scale that we did not think possible," Leape said. "And this highlights the imperative of building an economy around materials that we can use over and over again."

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