The $SORT Protocol

We live in a very inefficient material world. Our inability to manage our resources correctly directly impacts the lives of billions of people and greatly increases risk to life and prosperity for future generations. Waste will almost double by 2050 to 3.4 Bn tons per day and we are on the path to a 3.2ºC increase above pre-industrial levels by 2050. Shifting from a linear economy to a circular economy can deliver 85% of the GHGs reductions needed to stay below the 2ºC limit and reduce waste generation by more than 90%. Decarboning by ‘dewasting’ is the single most effective solution to avoiding global catastrophe.

Building a circular economy requires understanding that there are actually two circular cycles, the biological and technical, each representing 50% of total waste generation. The biological cycle is 100% recyclable because it is organic and if sorted from the technical cycle, recyclables can also scale 5-10X. Unfortunately, only 5% of biological waste is composted. Thus it is critical that waste generators (individuals and businesses) along with policy makers and the private sector work together to sort food waste and green waste and send them to composting centers.

Furthermore, 

• current recycle-to-earn programs are tied to the locality that they are implemented in

  • And this means that systems that implement recycle to earn for financially dominant countries can’t transpose their system on other international communities with different fiscal systems because of the whole different logistics setup for a different currency

• This means that users are tied to the power of the currency of their location instead of having access to stable coins tied to a powerful dollar. 

• And they don’t have education for setting up crypto wallets which would grant them financial freedom and access to decentralized lending.

If successful, this new offset market will transfer $500 billion/yr from the global economy to environmental “workers” in a decentralized fashion generating 100s of millions of new green jobs, including for the most underserved populations.

The ZWF through the Recycle-to-Earn SORT Protocol is a transparency solution to digitize the material economy and create a financial incentive for business and individuals to go Zero Waste. The SORT blockchain enables existing waste management applications to record waste events (logistics & audits) on the blockchain. The ZWF will generate unique accounts and wallets for each participant (individual and business), codify waste into a digital asset (MassIDs) that will record chain of custody, certify recycling with a third party Auditor (Bureau Veritas), mint and sell tokenized carbon credits (TCCs) in the form of NFTs and return the proceeds to all of the participants in the chain in the form of stable coins deposited into their wallets. Solidos will need to integrate via APIs with the ZWF’s SORT Protocol, 3 Composters (who also happen to do the hauling) will need to continue to use the Solidos waste management app and all participants, including the Waste Generators (>50 bars and restaurants in Brasília, Brazil) will need to provide the wallet addresses they will want their USDC to be deposited to.

Waste generators will finally know if the waste they sort is actually recycled, be rewarded for sorting and be able to prove their recycling to regulators. The Composters will receive additional revenues from the same composted waste, be able to offer carbon credits to their clients, and have additional resources to invest and grow their business. Buyers of carbon credits, companies needing to meet ESG goals and Extended Producer Responsibilities (EPR), will finally have an offset product that actually incentivizes recycling and where payment is made in a distributed fashion and free of intermediaries. We will be able to show government authorities  public on-chain data that will greatly alleviate their regulatory work while reducing costs.

Our goal (in the very short term) is to compost 100 tons of food waste from >50 local restaurants, educate 2,500 employees, support 32 green jobs and promote composting to tens of thousands of restaurant visitors.

Vulnerable communities are facing the consequences of the actions of people they’ll never meet and who are predominantly employed by large multinational corporations. These corporations profit from producing excess goods made from non-recycled material which make their way into the environment while also requiring further raw material extraction. The result is a modern era where plastics fill our oceans, chemicals from landfills seep into our waterways, and mining operations eradicate our ecosystems. 

The first step to mitigating the burden these communities face is a rapid scaling of recycling worldwide, which will benefit everyone, from pickers to haulers, processors and recyclers and even the industry as they are supplied with greater volumes of recycled raw materials and an offset mechanism through the purchase of credits that not only can they trust but can actually connect them to each participant along the waste supply chain in a decentralized manner. Zero Waste Foundation’s (ZWF) technology aligns economic and environmental incentives to accomplish this. 

These communities are served by ineffective waste management systems which lack transparency and the pressure to change. Without transparency, even individuals who take extraneous effort to recycle aren’t certain that their local infrastructure properly reclaims materials. Yet, with the SORT Protocol, communities can access a sophisticated waste-management logistics system which aligns economic and environmental incentives. With revenue streams subsidizing their waste management and rewarding locals who sort and recycle their waste, the flow of further waste into the environment is stemmed while reclaiming materials decreases new mining. 

Furthermore, the current Pilot of the ZWF is heavily focused on composting which reduces green-house gas emissions while strengthening local economies. Biological waste represents 50% of total waste volumes and all of it could be composted. In landfills, this waste can produce 10X the amount of methane gas as composting, and compost, the output from the work of composting biological waste, is an incredibly valuable, natural, nutrient-rich byproduct that is critical to restoring topsoil and protecting our future food security. Moreover, for every one job at a landfill or incinerator, 3.5 jobs are created through composting work. 

We believe tokenized carbon credits (TCCs) from composted Food Waste and Green Waste will soon be recognized as the single best Carbon Credits in the world and should capture premium value in the markets. If this value is captured correctly, it will fundamentally change the recycling markets globally, change the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and lead to a significant reduction in overall pollution.

The Zero Waste Foundation believes that within 15 years we can reach more than 90% recycling worldwide. Striving for this goal is an integral step in reversing the damage of the current waste-economy with immediate positive changes from curbing pollution while serving the larger aim of reducing climate change through stymying green-house gas emissions from biological waste. 

Our leadership team is experienced, with deep knowledge and a balanced background across sustainability, logistics, finance, fintech, tech, big data, marketing and business development. 

We have been building products in close partnership with our customers in the recycling ecosystem for more than 5 years and have validated our value proposition across all stakeholders. Our team is based in Brazil, a market with advanced legislation for waste management, an existing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) market for recycling credits and we are at the epicenter of the future, global carbon credits market.

Ian McKee (CEO) was formerly at Goldman Sachs, is a 3X tech entrepreneur, 15 year sustainability consultant (LEED AP and TRUE Zero Waste Advisor), and developed the first fully digitized Zero Waste bar and restaurant network (Instituto Ecozinha) which required helping start 5 composting facility and closing a deal with Owens-Illinois a glass bottling factory to buy cullet from more than 1,000k m away. 

Marcelo Doria (COO) started his first company in college, has negotiated more than $100mn in deals, and was the CEO of the company which took the X-Games to Brazil. Rafael Bertolli (CPTO) has 15 years in fintech and -ecommerce, having served as the director of product at VTEX (the largest e-commerce platform in Latin America). 

All three are from South American countries, leading to the ZWF pilot being hosted in Brasilia. From this heritage, they engage directly with the Brazilian community in native Portuguese, and understand the unique struggles of Brazilians to engage in sustainable waste-management. Using this connection, they are helping local restaurants on-board onto the logistics system and getting direct feedback from them as we complete our Pilot. 

Furthermore, while still in its infancy, we believe DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) are the future of organizational management systems. Until the $SORT network is able to establish product market fit, financial sustainability and robust community governance, the development of the network will be led primarily by the ZWF with the introduction of democratically voted directives of the Zero Waste DAO being built in progressively. However, we believe that no single individual, business, institution or central bank should be able to control or manipulate our community or its token economy. Therefore, the goal is for the network to ultimately be completely community-owned and led, and thus fully decentralized.

ZWDAO directives will be voted upon through a systematic approval process using Zero Waste Improvement Proposals (ZWIP) that will be moderated both by the ZWF and democratically elected internal bodies at the ZWDAO that will ensure the directives are aligned with the mission of the foundation and not malicious or detrimental to the ecosystem growth and product development. The ZWDAO will also be tasked with pursuing the foundational mission and aim to grow the $SORT economy into a global, fully decentralized zero waste solution. Participation will be open to all and governance rights are obtained through ownership of $SORT tokens, which can be earned through sorting and recycling work, or by purchasing tokens in the open market.

We have 716 waste generating clients (3,369 service orders per month on average), 6 recyclers (5 of which are composters) in 3 states in Brazil with zero churn.

This is a massive endeavor and one which the MIT Solve network can help with tremendously. We must execute on the technology and successfully help to onboard millions if not billions of people to DeFi in order to facilitate cross border stable coin distributions around the world. The digital asset regulatory and tax framework present great challenges.  Compliance laws regarding Extended Producer Responsibility mandates and Carbon accounting and offsetting needs to progress rapidly in all geographies. We must engage with global and local organizations across the non-profit and public spheres as well as convince then entire private market to adopt our marketplace.

I will risk saying this could be MIT Solve’s greatest endeavor and the project where it may be able to make the most significant contribution yet. 

We need to be backed by individuals who can bridge the tech, sustainability and financial ecosystems. We believe MIT Solve is uniquely positioned to help us.

In order to create a functioning circular economy that avoids pollution and preserves natural resources we must change wasteful behavior. We can do this by introducing transparency in recycling supply chains with the introduction of blockchain technology and adding incentives through the creation of a new offsets marketplace that rewards good behavior. By putting a price on the collective environmental work of recycling 1 ton of Plastic, 1 ton of Aluminum, 1 ton of CO2e avoided from recycling, etc… we can ensure that balance is obtained across the globe for sorting and recycling materials while also incentivizing substitution when combined with waste offsetting mandates.

Our solution of introducing new revenues into the recycling economy in a transparent and distributed fashion will dramatically improve participation and scale recycling verticals. As a blockchain layer we don’t compete with any of the existing market participants and we include everyone (waste generators, haulers (pickers), processors, recyclers and application providers) in the distribution of the proceeds for the sale of credits. Introducing new revenues has already been successful in Pay-As-You-Throw models, to limited effect, but in utilizing recycling credits in new environmental offsets marketplace which distributes the value across participants free of intermediaries we can completely change the game that is usually run by waste mafias and large waste management monopolies. Currently, pickers have little opportunity for earning a respectable wage and entrepreneurs have no incentive to invest and grow their businesses.

We can change this reality completely by creating a more transparent, equitable market and generate millions of good paying green jobs that will be funded by a dynamic market using blockchain and DeFi technologies.  We believe our Recycle-to-Earn protocol can become the best DeFi use case for onboarding millions of people, especially the most vulnerable. This will open the door for many other financial products that can help create a more just and inclusive financial system.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, by structuring the protocol under a DAO we can share this responsibility with all the members of the community who become co-owners of the protocol and can help to steward it into the future, thereby putting the fate of the world in the hands of the people rather than centralized governments and other entities. This is our chance to decentralized action on pollution and climate change and put the future of the world in the hands of the people.

We believe we can create a new US$500 bn dollar offset market within the next 10 years that will distribute more than 90% of this value in stable coins to environmental workers (recycling participants including companies and workers) around the world. We believe we can generate 10s of millions of jobs in this time frame and divert over 100 million tons of waste from landfills. By using DeFi to make payments from the rewards of the offset marketplace we believe we can extend banking services to some of the most vulnerable people in the world.  We want to be a powerful and positive force in the world and believe we can become the most significant impact organization ever to be built.

- Recycling Volumes (current)

- Volume of Tokenized Recycling Credits and Carbon Credits sold (future)

- $ value distributed to the Recycling Market (future)

- Jobs supported along the recycling supply chain (future)

Nature teaches us that waste is a choice. Technology coupled with new forms of human organization will enable modern civilization to exist in balance with our planet. The SORT protocol aims to be that balancing mechanism between a global economy that improves quality of life for humans while doing so within the constraints of our planet's biocapacity. 

Systemic change is possible and with the introduction of processes which are recurring and eliminate waste we can produce dramatic environmental, health, social and economic benefits over the short and long term. This is the path that can orient us to begin regenerating our planet.

We use blockchain to codify waste (MassIDs) into digital assets and track waste custody (proof-of-provenance & proof-of-physical-work). We will use AI to identify anomalies and bad actors and facilitate the work of auditors. Proof-of-authority will keep bad actors at bay as those flagged will financially penalize all who are associated with that actor. NFTs will be minted to identify certified recycled waste masses that are verified by third party auditors.  Wrapping smart contracts will enable fungible tokens to be minted from NFTs to create a dynamic market place (liquidity pools) that can be traced back to individual NFTs recorded on the blockchain. Oracles will read the price of different material types and distribute stable coins to the wallets of all participants.

The new technologies presented above will be used to change behavior in the real world and most users will not even know that they are interacting with the blockchain. All they will need initially is a wallet address which can be supplied to them on a non-custodial basis.

We have a diverse team but still have not included a woman in our leadership. We are very aware of this and are actively searching.