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.
To further boost the capabilities, scalability, and impact of the Empower Platform, the Empower team has been working to put the learnings and experiences from operating within the whole value chain, including grass root informal sector, in more than 40 countries over the last four years to work. This is done by launching the Empowerchain, the digital infrastructure for a circular economy, its native $MPWR token, standardized recycling incentive tokens like $PCRD (Plastic Credits), and customizable incentive tokens like the EMP (the Empower B2C Proof of Contribution token). The EmpowerChain is built to enhance a tried and tested concept that revolutionizes profitable plastic waste removal and enables a circular economy.
