CirFin EcoPoints

One primary factor contributing to the current situation of our world is the linear economy of our society, which is characterized by the take-make-waste model and relies heavily on the mass consumption of resources. It is imperative to transition towards a circular economy, which advocates for the reuse, rental, repair, and return of our products. Nevertheless, this change necessitates a fundamental alteration in the behaviors of consumers and merchants and encounters several obstacles.

Challenge 1: Tactical welfare takes priority over longer-term benefits

Any endeavor to tackle climate change that does not lead to economic prosperity and upliftment is destined to be unsuccessful in the long run. Humanity has consistently demonstrated that immediate welfare, however tactical it might be, will always take precedence over benefits that seem distant and applicable to future generations. 

Challenge 2: Siloed, fragmented ad-hoc efforts

Although corporations worldwide are aware of the importance of promoting sustainable behavior, the solutions offered to consumers are often ad-hoc and isolated without clear benefits. For example, recently, both Uber and Starbucks introduced campaigns promoting sustainable behavior. Uber tracks carbon miles saved by consumers who exhibited “sustainable behavior” by opting for an EV. Starbucks now allows consumers to bring their own reusable cups. However to the consumer these are two siloed efforts with limited incentives to change their habits. What do they gain by bringing their own cups? Why bother? And wait for an extra 10 minutes for an EV when a fossil fuel car is available immediately? And while my currency (money) is readily accepted by both companies, neither will recognize my sustainable behavior across other merchants. And for consumers interacting with numerous such vendors, tracking so many “points” across so many vendors is simply not feasible. It is for these reasons, such sustainable campaigns lack impact beyond fulfilling the “annual reporting” obligations of enterprises.

Challenge 3: Lack of government visibility

Finally, for taxpayers, what is the motivation to adopt circular habits? The government has no visibility into this. The majority of government initiatives aimed at promoting sustainability rely on fines or fees, such as gas taxes, highway tolls, and carpool lanes, rather than incentives.

Thus, while our planet’s warming continues unabated despite a general awareness about global warming, efforts to change consumer and merchant behavior have proven to be challenging. 

CirFin EcoPoints attempts to address these challenges.

CirFin EcoPoints provides a unified platform that uses the concept of “EcoPoints” to incentivize the transition to a circular economy. 

Step 1: Baselining Circular Behaviors

“EcoPoints” baselines or represent any circular habit to a common quantifiable denominator, i.e., the “EcoPoint”. So saving CO2 miles using an EV is mapped to a certain number of “EcoPoints”. Likewise, using your cup or utensils when buying coffee or takeout food can be mapped to “EcoPoints” as well. Think of every possible circular habit - using EV from Uber, using your cup for Starbucks, using your utensils when ordering food from DoorDash, renting special purpose shoes (instead of buying them) - all could be potentially mapped to “EcoPoints”. And because “EcoPoints” is now the common denominator, the consumer can use them across merchants.

Step 2: Merchant Signups

Merchants play a crucial role in the CirFin EcoPoint platform. They can use the CirFin EcoPoint app to get on boarded to the platform. Each merchant that signs up with the CirFin EcoPoint platform will control how many “EcoPoints” would they award to the consumer for their merchant specific circular behavior. As more merchants sign up, the goal is to create healthy competition so each merchant tries to reward maximum possible points for circular behavior vis-a-vis another merchant in the same category. 

Step 3: Consumer Signups

The consumers who sign-up on the platform can now use the CirFin EcoPoint app to register their “EcoPoints.” The “EcoPoint” can be used across vendors i.e. EcoPoints generated by using an EV with Uber can now be leveraged to buy coffee at Starbucks. The “EcoPoints” received for using reusable cups at Starbucks could be applied against future takeout orders at DoorDash. This creates instant, tactical gratification and economical saving to the consumer, making them more amenable to change their habits and also enjoy the benefits of their sustainable actions.

Step 4: Government Incentives

Instead of asking consumers to pay financial tools on highways or gas taxes, governments can also start recognizing CirFin EcoPoints. As the platform grows, it becomes more accessible for the government to track what merchants or companies are having tremendous success with their circular campaigns due to the unified CirFin EcoPoint platform.

CirFin EcoPoint provides a unified platform for Merchants, Consumers, and Government and accelerates the transition to a circular economy through greater visibility, tracking, and cross-merchant incentivization of consumers to go circular.

The concept and technology behind CirFin EcoPoints can be used globally and across industries. Underserved communities could be on either side of the CirFin EcoPoint transaction. They could be consumers wanting to save money on their next coffee purchase (which is especially relatable in California given the high inflation), or they could be merchants trying to expand their business to support their families - CirFin EcoPoints enables them to offer points to customers of other merchants thereby helping them in increasing their customer footprint. These transactions are always facilitating transitioning to a circular economy, which in turn leads to many other benefits such as:

• healthier climate (less CO2 emissions means less respiratory illnesses in communities)

• less food waste - so more food for the underserved

• less garbage in landfills - so less soil and water contamination

CirFin is a global platform that inspires youth worldwide to embrace a transition to a circular economy incentivized by fintech solutions; through workshops, authored books, podcasts, and online resources, CirFin encourages the adoption of fintech solutions to give our planet a fighting chance to revitalize itself. At CirFin, we are passionate about deploying FinTech innovations like “CirFin EcoPoints” to accelerate the transition to a Circular Economy. Being in the Bay Area puts us near merchants supporting the “gig” economy, such as Uber, DoorDash, and Lyft. The region is also home to numerous small business owners (restaurants, coffee shop owners) with a relatively high appreciation of global warming and climate change. This will help launch our app and platform locally and secure feedback from consumers and merchants to refine the system continuously. Given the global, virtual reach of CirFin, eventually, the goal would be to extend the “transactional” reach of CirFin EcoPoints globally with local ambassadors whose feedback would be crucial to continuously enhancing and refining the platform.

CirFin EcoPoints is currently in the concept stage. The design for the mobile app and underlying system which will be on AWS has been completed with a working prototype of merchant and consumer signups. We have also identified a library of circular idea categories where CirFin EcoPoints could be applied or generated. We have also discussed the idea with local merchants and their response has been overwhelmingly positive. Our next goal is to bring the system to market and complete a transaction- an exchange of CirFin points spanning two different merchants. We would also like to expand our team to sign up more merchants and consumers.

Our hope is to become part of the Solve community so we can connect with partners, leaders and experts so we can:

• Gain external validation and feedback on CirFin EcoPoints
• Get ideas, suggestions or even introductions in growing the corporation partner base (i.e. signing up the Ubers, Starbucks, of the worlds)
• Understand legal challenges that we may not be aware about
• Get guidance on region specific nuances (what may work in the US  may not work in Europe or Asia) 
• Set ourselves to scale and maximum impact for the future.

Sustainability solutions are fragmented and need more financial incentives to motivate consumers to change their habits. CirFin EcoPoints provides a unified platform and interface with economic incentives to enable the transition to a circular economy. By allowing consumers to not only accrue EcoPoints but also use those EcoPoints across different merchants, it:

• Provides direct incentives to consumers to adopt the circular economy
• Enables merchants to gain new customers by accepting their circular points, which they received from other customers
• Facilitates transparent tracking and reporting of quantifiable circular habit metrics, which can further attract more consumers and merchants to join the ecosystem
• Enables the government to move to an incentive-based model rather than the current fee-based model to motivate consumers to adopt more sustainable habits

CirFin EcoPoints incentivizes the transition to a Circular Economy by using innovative FinTech platform - a mobile app running on AWS backend - that results in a common, simple, unified interface to the consumer spanning across multiple merchants. Thus our target audience is:

• The consumer like you and me who buys coffee, uses a rideshare or requests take out food
• Merchants selling these items
• The government

All three are incentivized by CirFin EcoPoints to transition to a circular economy using our platform.

Our impact will be measured by:

• the number of CirFin EcoPoint driven transactions that our platform would enable
• the number of merchants we sign on our platform
• the number of consumers we sign on our platform
• the total number of CirFin EcoPoints on our platform

CirFin EcoPoints is a mobile app on the front end and the backend is on AWS running MongoDb, Python and Java.

Full-time Staff - Myself (Junior in High School)

I have been working on CirFin since 2021 but on EcoPoints since Fall 2023.

At CirFin.org, we are committed to diversity. The best of ideas come when diverse thoughts intersect to generate new ideas. 

We seek to remove any barriers for participation and hope to ensure CirFin EcoPoints is equitable and open to all. 

We hope to leverage the Solve network go develop a diverse of partners, merchants and consumers.

At this point, CirFin EcoPoints is self funded through funds raised by me through participation in various events. We intend to keep our platform small in terms of required resources by leveraging innovation to scale our operations and using platforms like AWS that provide economies of scale. Being in high-school and non-profile allows us take advantage of cost savings offered by platforms like AWS.

As a founder, I do not need incentives to revitalize our planet. However, CirFin EcoPoints provides direct incentives to our consumers to move to circular economy and encourages merchants to provide more incentives to meet their circular economy and sustainable aspirations.

As stated above, current CirFin EcoPoints is self-funded through amounts raised by the founder at competitions. 

Eventually, we hope that like-minded organizations and corporations that are motivated to promote sustainability will fund our operations (similar to wikipedia) given that we are a non-profit.

Our aspirations are to have CirFin EcoPoints make a global impact.