All about Plastiks: From A to Z

Plastiks, how it started  

Once upon a time in 2019, our co-founder and CEO Andre Vanyi-Robin met with our chief technology officer Daniel Garia Perez and a passionate environmentalist, Trym Lyngset, and bonded over coffee and the exhilarating idea of starting a business like no other, that would enable transparent plastic recovery using blockchain technology, merging two very different worlds, the old web2 with the new web3. And so it began, Plastiks was born. A green tech company, that verifies the recovery and recycling of plastic waste from the environment.

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The Plastic Problem 

Today, there is more plastic being produced across the globe than is being recovered and recycled. Over 2000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into our oceans every single day, with plastic pollution set to triple by 2060, if no action is taken. According to this UN article, 46% of plastic waste ends up in landfills, 22% becomes litter, 17% is incinerated, 15% is collectedfor recycling, but only 9% actually gets recycled. Shocking, right?

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Here’s where Plastiks comes in 

A dedicated, diverse team, with over 10 nationalities, Plastiks emerges as a beacon of hope to tackle the problem of plastic pollution. Our solution: integrating plastic recovery and recycling into every consumer transaction. Put simply, this means that we have developed business models, whereby plastic can be recovered and recycled every time a product or service is sold. Our business modelsIf you are looking to collaborate with a trusted partner to fulfil your company's sustainability goals, then look no further. Here are our four methods of collaboration:

• Ticketing: recovering plastic with every concert ticket, football game ticket, and event ticket sold. Imagine the plastic that would be recovered if for every Taylor Swift concert ticket, one kilo of plastic was recovered from the environment! 
• Ecommerce widget/Shopify widget: plastic recovery made easy! Now you can go to your favorite Shopify store and recover plastic at the time of checkout, from the comfort of your sofa. Non-Shopify stores can also showcase a simple widget on their website that shows the plastic they have recovered in real-time.  
• Customized campaigns: companies can recover plastic with every product or service that they sell and offer rewards to their customers for helping to recover plastic. Customers can be rewarded with discounts, and companies can show the plastic they have recovered with their unique sustainability dashboard on Plastiks. Look at the example of Rosita beer.  
• Digital collectibles: here we can use the example of our sports partner FC Barcelona, recovering plastic with a collection of digital collectibles. Every digital piece of art recovers plastic from the environment. To reward fans for their purchase, the renowned football club gave 10 signed Barca jerseys to lucky winners. Environmental impact and fan engagement all in one!

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The What  

So now you know who we are, and the problem we are solving, but what is it that we do. Let’s dive in! At Plastiks, we trace plastic waste from recovery to recycling and turn this data into plastic credits. A plastic credit is a digital certificate of proof that plastic has been recovered from the environment, but our plastic credits differ from our competition, not only providing proof of recovery, but also proof of recycling. To give you a clear roadmap of the processes behind Plastiks, here’s an overview of how plastic is traced from the time it is recovered, until it is recycled.

• Plastic recovery entities are audited by the Plastiks team, and after meeting our strict criteria, upload their plastic credits to the Plastiks marketplace.  
• The plastic credits are digital proof of the plastic that has been recovered and sold to the recycler. The data of the invoice, including plastic types and quantities, is the data used to create the plastic credits.  
• Plastic credit data is saved on the blockchain. Blockchain is like a digital ledger that keeps a record of transactions, and it's shared among many computers, making it secure and transparent. 
• Companies and sports clubs purchase plastic credits or attach them to their product or service to showcase their commitment to the environment, meeting their sustainability goals and rewarding customers for playing their part.  
• Recovery entities get paid when their plastic credits are sold, and they get paid in PLASTIK tokens. They can then convert their tokens to cash and use the money to buy new machines, to set up free medical camps for workers, or for educational purposes.  

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The How  

After having a look at what we do, let’s talk about how we use blockchain technology to both track the plastic that is recovered and recycled, and to trace the PLASTIK tokens, from when plastic credits are sold to when the tokens reach the recovery entities. As mentioned, all data regarding plastic recovered is reflected on the plastic credits, and the data is saved on the blockchain for everyone to see. This allows Plastiks to be fully transparent. Blockchain also helps us to forge trust with companies and recovery entities. The movement of tokens can be fully traced from when a company buys plastic credits or attaches plastic credits to its product/service, to when the tokens are delivered to the recovery entity. Why don’t recovery entities get paid in fiat? The great thing about blockchain is that recovery project workers can get paid without needing a bank account, which many have no access to. Token payments can be made directly to the workers via mobile applications, no intermediary needed. Also, with blockchain, we can see that the tokens go directly to recovery workers.

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That’s the Plastiks ecosystem in a nutshell, pioneering a method of plastic recovery that has never before been seen. We are the very first to incorporate blockchain into plastic waste recovery, and the first to develop a token for plastic recovery: the PLASTIK token. In our ecosystem everyone wins; the company in search of a sustainability partner, the recovery entity that needs funds to fulfill its tasks and pay its workforce, and Plastiks.

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Benefits for businesses 

• Companies meet their sustainable development goals 
• Showcase their environmental impact to their customers with their Plastiks sustainability dashboard 
• Increase customer engagement and respect  
• Increase their revenue by satisfying the needs and values of young customers today  

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Benefits for recovery entities  

• Recovery entities generate additional revenue from the sale of plastic credits  
• Improve their recovery and recycling infrastructure  
• Open new recovery locations to expand their environmental impact  
• Social impact: empower women in the workforce, educate communities and offer support to marginalized groups  

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Benefits for the world  

After reading this article, you should have a clear idea of how companies and recovery entities benefit from working with Plastiks, but the impact of what we do goes deeper than that. Collectively, the companies that collaborate with us, the recovery workers that pick up the plastic, and you reading this article, are changing the world, one kilo of recovered plastic at a time. To this day, we have prevented over two million kilos of plastic from ending up in the environment, and it is a feat that we could not have managed without the support of people exactly like you. As Hellen Keller puts it: “Alone we can do so little, but together we can do so much.”If you’re ready to step up to sustainability and take part in the fight against plastic pollution, you know where we are!

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