In 2018, Empower was started 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 of a linear economy where stakeholders are siloed with no responsibility for what happens outside their part of the value chain, there is now a massive lack of both waste collection and recycling infrastructure and collection data. This makes the shift towards a circular economy very hard and time-consuming. 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.
