Plastic credits are flawed –Here's how Plastiks is challenging the market
The concept of plastic credits is flawed, and many consumers and companies buying plastic credits are not aware of the actual standard and how it is being used. Therefore, Plastiks is challenging the status quo of plastic credits to create a movement towards a more transparent and sustainable management of plastics worldwide. By mitigating plastic pollution using Plastic Recovery Guarantees, Plastiks can ensure that plastic is not ending up in the environment.
This article aims to clarify the issues regarding plastic credits and how it differs from Plastic Recovery Guarantees.
Plastic credits vs. Plastic Recovery Guarantees
At Plastiks marketplace, we sell Plastic Recovery Guarantees (PRG) as a certificate on how much plastic has been recovered from a specific area. It may sound like plastic credits, but there are a few significant differences between regular plastic credits and Plastiks PRGs.
What is a plastic credit?
A plastic credit is a unit of data, representing the collection of a specified weight (e.g. one kilogram, one metric ton) of plastic waste that has been recovered from the environment and managed in a responsible way. In that way, plastic credits and PRGs are the same. However, the responsible manner of managing the recovered plastic allows for it to be landfilled, incinerated or recycled. The opaque management of plastic credits means that they don’t always serve as a reliable proof to ensure that this plastic won't be returned to the environment
What is a Plastic Recovery Guarantee?
A Plastic Recovery Guarantee™ is a digital receipt containing data from a specific act of plastic recovery from the environment. More specifically, what type of plastics and how much that has been recovered, from where and what legal entity that did the job.
A Plastic Recovery Guarantee is based on NFT technology, thus guaranteeing its permanent and transparent content. This allows for companies and recovery projects to transact between themselves to buy and sell Plastic Recovery Guarantees and sponsor certain acts of plastic waste recovery.
Read more: Learn how Plastiks works in 6 steps
The problems with plastic credits
Due to waste management and the plastic credit system allowing plastics to end up at landfills, the system is flawed. In such cases, plastic is just being recovered from one part of the environment – just to be collected, transferred and dumped in another part of the environment, creating extra CO2 in the transportation process.
Therefore, we don’t consider plastic credits as a positive act. We are not going to go into the details of the consequences of landfill dumping, or how it affects the environment, the animals and future generations in this article, but as you can imagine, it is not very positive.
In some cases, using landfills is a necessary evil to be able to cope with the huge quantities of, not just plastic waste, but waste in general. However, in order to not further the growing landfills, we are we are not incentivizing any landfill. All plastic recovered through Plastiks marketplace will be reused as a resource or made into new products. In which, it can either re-enter the same supply chain from which it was discarded (e.g. bottles becoming bottles again) or be transformed into new goods.
Due to the issues regarding the actual impact of the plastic credit recovery, many companies fear going into what can be perceived as “greenwashing” schemes. Some are raising questions about the plastic credits, for example, when did the actual recovery impact take place and how old is the recovery data? And it has shown that some plastic credits represent old recovery data, dating back several years.
NFT technology provides a fully transparent process
In order to provide a fully traceable and accurately labeled record of recovered materials, Plastiks uses blockchain technology in tracing plastic waste. From the disposal of plastic waste to the marketing of this material in its upward cycles to its recycling, blockchain certification ensures that all activities leading to certification are stored in a transparent and traceable way.
Plastiks ultimately increases traceability of plastics while creating an additional stream of revenue for impactful projects that are reducing plastic waste in the environment. Our platform embraces plastic recovery projects in locations where it is most needed and connects them with sponsoring companies on a recovery guarantee system with clear guidelines and prices.
Read more: Discover our different recovery projects
How you can become a part of the movement
Plastiks is the first web3 ecosystem and utility NFT marketplace that fights plastic pollution and thereby sets the bar for a new standard of plastic recovery, providing transparency and ensuring the plastic recovered is not going back into the environment. With the technology in place, verifying every step of the process, we hope to shed more light on the flawed plastic credit market and push the plastic credit system towards more responsible process with accurate verification.
Our PRG gives both individuals and companies an equal opportunity to take verifiable and transparent environmental action. You can sponsor recovery projects as an individual, sponsoring with whatever amount you wish. One US Dollar equals 1 kg plastic recovered. 1 kg may sound insignificant, but it’s equal to 2500 straws, 108 plastic bottles or 180 plastic bags!
For companies, you can become a monthly sponsor, or you can book a meeting with one of our advisors and discover the different ways you can make a difference and achieve your ESG goals.