Can blockchain help us shift to a circular economy?

Can blockchain technologies help us shift to a circular economy?

With consumer demand for sustainable products growing by 71 percent in the last five years, and calls for companies to truthfully demonstrate responsible and ethical sourcing, the technology industry has been challenged to respond. The answer? Blockchain, of course. 

In this recent article from Resource, industry experts are championing blockchain when it comes to regulatory requirements for ‘radical’ transparency in supply chains, and easy access to data on how materials and products are sourced, saying it will hugely speed up pathways to ‘second life’ and recycling.

‘By 2030, digital technologies will have the potential to help save 20 percent of global CO2 emissions’

The fact that blockchain based technology could cause a paradigm shift towards a circular economy, is very powerful. Whatsmore, the article describes some real benefits and use cases of the blockchain technology which our platform FALKOR SI addresses. 

Benefits and use cases of the blockchain technology which our platform FALKOR SI addresses

• Driving responsible decision making and product innovation, thanks to available data and full transparency. We have seen this ourselves with procurement marketplaces and exchanges where transparency and power of data can lead to more efficient and correct decisions within it. 

• Environmental and social benefits, like emissions, visibility of source, and supply chain. We’ve seen use cases around ESG and financial reporting efficiency and increasing visibility and transparency. 

• Benefits to companies in terms of visibility of their own supply chains and to report on ESG and emissions. It’s not only the customer/user that sees the benefits but also the companies themselves. They gain efficiency but also greater visibility and awareness of exactly what kind of supplier base they have, and can make informed decisions from there. We’ve also seen a need for carbon credits exchanges through use of tokenisation and data layers of FALKOR SI, which can help to lower overall emissions. 

• Creating Digital Twins for physical assets. We have seen use cases around tagging parts for vehicles and then representing that on the blockchain through a unique identifier. Then subsequently being able to push updates and retrieve the latest information from the blockchain based on latest scans of the part. We’ve also seen the need to link surrounding data to that digital representation, as the part moves through the supply chain, adding context.

Other themes that the article delves into, that are relevant to FALKOR SI include: 

Integration with Data Management systems 

Our key focus as a service is to provide a backend capability that can be integrated to existing applications or new ones. Many of these are existing data management systems that are supporting user / customer facing benefits, but they need to be enhanced by wider backend capability to achieve exchanges, tokenisation, transparency, and all the other benefits discussed above. 

Links to other digital transformation technologies 

We have seen a number of projects in which other services can be built around the blockchain and applications, in order to provide greater benefits. These include edge data collection and AI, and ML models being applied to data that’s transacted in order to create automation. 

What ByzGen can do for you

If any of the above has piqued your interest, or you want to know more about our enterprise blockchain platform FALKOR SI and how it could help you and your business, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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