Environmental Protection, Product Identity, Security and Trust with Deposy

Deposy uses the properties of the cryptocurrency IOTA in combination with the tangle. IOTA is used for payments because transaction fees are avoided. (What is IOTA?) The transfer and validation of the product data is handled by Tangle. This gives the plastic packaging an immutable identity.

There have been many discussions with industry stakeholders and companies in recent weeks. Research institutions will do a scientific monitoring of the project. Additionally, there are already some offers for testbeds.

Upon implementing the Deposy project, the following aspects are important to us:

• Environmental Protection
• Security
• Product ID
• Trust

Environmental Protection

According to a study by the consulting firm McKinsey, more than 30 percent of all plastic packaging is not disposed of in an orderly recycling cycle. It is otherwisely disposed of at the expense of nature. The experts estimate the resulting economic costs at $ 40 billion per year. Microplastic particles formed during the decomposition of plastic waste are absorbed by humans and animals through food and air. According to experts this entails increased health risks. With Deposy a part of this plastic waste is to be recycled through an orderly cycle. Thus anyone who uses it contributes to environmental protection. There are several things that make the Deposy system stand out:

• The population gets a financial incentive to collect, sort and distribute plastic waste. It will be repaid more than deposit was paid.
• The application is simple. It is based on IOTA, a modern distributed ledger technology, and could be used worldwide.
• The collector gets the deposit either on his IOTA wallet or, thanks to cooperation, in his local currency, e.g. Euro paid into his account.
• The mechanical sorting of plastic waste is time-consuming and requires a lot of energy. Furthermore, recycled plastic requires far less energy than the complete new production. Thus, the deposit system helps to reduce CO2 emissions and to achieve the climate goals.
• For the industry this system makes it easier to meet recycling targets, because the upstream step of expensive mechanical sorting is eliminated.

Security

There are some examples of barcode-based deposit systems. Such as the German PET for returnable bottles. Through deposit system fraud with copied labels, the damage was, according to experts, more than 100 million Euros since 2014. We want to prevent this with Deposy. Our system contains a unique identity through a QR code. This identity is unique and is invalidated upon return of the deposit, so that in any case a QR code can only be used once. This can provide confidence in manufacturers and participants in the system.

Product Identity

With the Deposy deposit system, we introduce an identity for each product. Why is this important? For us, the Deposy product identity means that important features of the product are stored safely throughout the life cycle on the Tangle. Basically it can be a lot of information. For our system, first the product properties and e.g. the carbon footprint of plastic important. The product properties are important for sorting in the vending machine. With these properties the recycler can accurately detect the composition of the each piece of plastic waste. In the future, the carbon footprint can become important to capture the amount of CO2 saved. Many more things can be deposited in further steps in Tangle.

Trust

With Deposy we want to redefine the value of avoiding plastic waste. Through the security of the system and the unique product identity, we want to create trust and demonstrate the ownership of each and every one of us to avoid waste and provide incentives through a reward system.

A detailed description of the Deposy system is available here as a pdf.

Strengthening a circular economy ist the goal of Deposy. That means to reuse used substances without loss of quality and to minimize waste. Therefore our slogan is “Redefining Plastic Waste”