Circular chain

Our model of production and consumption is unsustainable. Too many products become waste and end up in landfills and incinerators. With the global urbanization growth, our planet faces a problem of epic proportions. To solve this challenge, it is evitable for us to adopt a circular ecosystem which demands a paradigm shift in how people look at recycled products.

Transition to a circular economy, necessitates a change in consumer behavior, and we approach this through Circular Chain, a consumer engagement platform catalyze tech to foster communities acting as groundswell for social influence around the best sustainable lifestyle practices,

There is a global recognition that unsustainable patterns of consumption (the linear approach of) are leading to serious and environmental impacts, putting a catastrophic strain on the environment, fueling climate change, destroying the ecosystem and undermining sustainable development. As it stands, 72% of the global (GHG) emissions are related to household consumption. scientists have warned of the vanishing window to keeping global warming to levels the International Community has deemed safe where all carbon emissions must reach zero by 2030 in every country in the world, and if we are to stay less than 20 This is a serious challenge to the humanity race and has attracted the attention of many human rights activists, non-profits and governments, and are pushing for citizenry engagement in pro-environment behaviour through awareness campaigns. Despite the very high profile of plastic issues, this increased awareness is not translating into consumer action, and for many of us, it has not fundamentally changed the way we behave

Our customers are Municipal Waste Council serving residents in Big and small towns as well as companies that carry out recycling of (plastic | organic | battery) and clean up initiatives. We’ve carried out a pilot with 27 households in Elementaita community Gilgil, Kenya to test our assumptions and hypothesis around the applicability of social influence to promote community exchange and efficacy of sustainable lifestyle practices.

Take Away: Existing barriers that contributed low engagement in pro environment behaviour, ranged from Behavior barrier where households didn’t see the benefits of recycling and moreover, they thought it was the job of local authorities, and secondly, some residents had confusion around what materials are recyclable. We approach these challenges by organizing local community networks that promote social influence as well as knowledge exchange around the best sustainable lifestyle practices, this way we promote individual efficacy in pro environmental behaviour, and to solve the knowledge gap around what is recyclable, we apply computer vision to help with sorting of different material types at the source, ranging from plastics (inclusive of differentiated material types), glass, electronic and food waste. This way households are able to sort waste correctly, thus increasing recycling rates.

Circular Chain, is a circular economy centered consumer engagement app that catalyzes technology to foster localized community networks, acting as groundswell for social influence and education exchange around best sustainable lifestyle practices like Waste Recovery through Upcycling and Recycling to Setting up Clean up Initiatives that help clean up existing plastic mess. Thereby paving the way for systemic transition to a circular economy where waste is nonexistent, and this plays a big part in developing sustainable production and consumption value chains.

Based on research; from a psychological perspective, addressing the threats of unsustainable production and consumption involve not only education, which imparts objective facts upon a passive individual, but also socializing process. This way of acquiring Circular Economy knowledge can be one variable in a social influence model that results in a person feeling more integrated into a community that is concerned about responsible production and consumption.

Surveys to help measure carbon emitting practices | Computer vision to help sort waste | gamification | Social network to help community members exchange knowledge as well as hold offline events like clean up initiatives.

Existing solutions applied to promoting consumer engagement, include Online and Offline Awareness Campaigns involve Poster starter kits and traditional advertisement where by they make posts on Public transit, other companies apply nudging through gamification, however, with all this effort, the awareness hasn’t translated into action.

Circular Chain connects acquiring of waste recovery knowledge with integration into a community, which results in greater engagement in climate friendly behaviors, utilizing social influence model to provide a different lens through which to understand the importance of waste recovery (proper disposal of waste) among other pro environmental behaviors.

Waste management is the most important services local authorities provide its residents and takes up a significant cut out of their budget. A report from World Bank “What a Waste” estimates the amount of municipal solid waste to rise from the 1.3 Billion tonne/year to 2.2 Billion tonnes/year by 2025, and consequentially cause an increase in global waste management costs from $205 Billion to $375 Billion. The current waste management trend account for 5% of total GHG emissions and represent a loss of $80-$120 Billion/year to the global economy.

Increased engagement promotes waste diversion, thus reducing waste management costs and GHG emissions. In a city with 1.5 million inhabitants, we can help generate profits of $13.7 million/year, from better sorting, not including landfilling costs, roughly $9/person. Scaling that up globally would correspond to profits of $64 billion for municipal budgets, and this will help our customers cater for the increasing waste management costs.

Carbon Footprint Calculator – Well, we know that you can solve it, if you can’t measure it, carbon footprint calculator helps households map out different sources of carbon in their daily activities and provide tips to help reduce emissions and most importantly, recommends local community groups to join that are carrying out initiatives to offset carbon in the area the respective resident is facing challenges.

Social Network & Behaviour Change – To allow community members to exchange knowledge by holding local events and cleanup initiatives, as well as promote a sense of belonging.

Application of Computer Vision - to help with Waste Sorting into Plastics | Glass | Organics

Existing barriers to a circular economy are inadequate knowledge around sorting of waste or how to reduce waste and behavioral where some of the consumers don’t really see the benefit of engaging in pro-environment behavior, seeing it as a role to be played by the local authority. Some want to adopt sustainable lifestyles but lack consistent and reliable information to inform their actions.

Current techniques applied to drive engagement involve driving consumer awareness through social media channels, as well as through posters and kits with information on sort or on why consumers should engage in pro-environmental behaviour like Waste recycling and proper disposal of plastic packaging. Despite the very high profile of plastic issues, this increased awareness is not translating into consumer action, and for many of us, it has not fundamentally changed the way we behave. Many still lack the knowledge on how to sort waste or even acknowledge the benefits of waste reduction.

Research proves that from a psychological perspective, addressing the threats of climate change involves not only education, which imparts objective facts upon a passive individual, but also a socializing, this is because social delivery plays a large role in behavioral change.

Circular Chain manages to drive more engagement than existing solutions simply because we connect acquiring of waste reduction knowledge with integration into a community, which results in greater engagement in pro-environment behavior. And we go a step further by providing consumers with tools to help them direct their actions to achieve wider change

Before working on our solution, we carried out a community pilot with 27 households in Gilgil, Kenya, to test the hypothesis whether creation of local community networks will help spread and exchange of sustainable lifestyle practices through social influence. In that point of time, our operations were offline and we didn’t have the product. We have designed the prototype that we are using to seek validation.

1 Year: In one year, we will be serving more than 50 communities (100 residents per community, | Total of 500 residents)

5 Year: In 5 years, we will be serving 800 communities. (Total of 80000 residents). Assumptions

There are organizations like Recycling Partnership, which serve more than 300 communities, Tesla Battery Recycling, has operations in North America and Europe, Adidas x Parley, carry out clean up initiatives in different locations around the world, and working with them allows us to tap into their existing communities.

They are not the only one’s we hope to work with in the future, other stakeholders include Suez, Waste Management, Nike, Terrapass and TerraCycle.

Our mission is to help accelerate adoption of sustainable lifestyles, in which recycling, upcycling is part of, and in the short term, 6 to 12 months, we have set a goal of increasing recycling rate by 10% and in the long term, we want to help achieve 100% waste diversion rate goal. This helps reduce GHG emissions as well as ecological crisis.

Our two main challenges right now are human capital and funding.

Limited funding & strained human capital has lengthened product delivery time

Human Capital - With limited human capital, we have considered going out of our way to so favors for some of our friends, in return they help us solve some of the issues we experience through application of their respective skills. We have also considered use of open source tools and data to train our computer vision model.

Funding - with limited financing, we have opted to bootstrap Circular Chain where we use our savings to live daily lives and work from home, this way we spend less as well as reduce our carbon footprint.

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Our team is composed of Daniel Fernandez who shares a background in Software and Game Development, possessing experience working with organizations like Accenture, and based in Manila and Allan Okoth, a Product Designer & Business Developer, sharing background in Computer Science, with 2 years entrepreneurial experience working in the Tech sector, currently based in Kenya.

We complement each other skills, and being from different countries, we catalyze the difference to bring in diverse perspectives and experiences in problem-solving, this way, we are able to design a solution that will be used by many users in different continent.

We also come from countries that have experienced health and environmental issues caused by plastic issues, and for this we are committed to make our society better

At the moment, we are working with a small community in Gilgil, with 27 households, where we tested our assumptions. After delivering Circular chain, we want to tap into alliances and circular economy networks to access our prospective clients

We implement a subscription-based business model, providing continuous access to Circular Chain services for respective community households served by a waste management company or municipal council and a onetime setup and customer support fee for each community served.

Circular Chain promotes households’ (beneficiaries) engagement in efficient waste recovery practices that increase waste diversion, thus reducing waste management costs as well as GHG emissions. In a city with 1.5 million inhabitants, we can help generate profits of $13.7 million per year, from better sorting, not including landfilling costs, roughly $9 per person. Scaling that up globally would correspond to profits of $64 billion for municipal budgets, and this will help our customers (local authorities) cater for the increasing waste management costs

We expect to fund our 2019/2020 expenses through Grant/Investment, and later sustain our operations by selling our core product to prospective clients. We plan to break even in 2 years.

What makes Solve to stand out from other communities around the world, is its community passion to solve problems in society that really matter, and that has been evident for all the years since founding. Being part of this community will help Circular chain thrive, not only from a financial standpoint but also through networking with other entrepreneurs. More importantly is the diversity of the community, and this can be helpful in scaling solutions to problems experienced in different continents. Our mission is to accelerate systemic transition to a Circular Economy where waste is nonexistent, and I believe, being part of Solve community of problem solvers will help us achieve our mission.

At the moment, we are working with finite resources, in terms of Funding & Human capital to develop the core product & grow the business. As a result, we are using our own savings to bootstrap working from different cities. This has further slowed development pace, in spite of all this we carried out a pilot, and 2 months in we’ve designed a prototype that we are currently using to validate with prospective clients.

Few verticals that we seek help to accelerate bringing the product to market are Partnership with organizations (I have included them as part of the answers in next question), Access to Funding (Grants/Equity), to help with hiring, this will in turn further shorten the development time to 3 months., and finally help recruiting one developer with experience in Machine Learning and Computer Vision, and this will go far, in setting up automation in our system as well as setup the Waste Sorting tool. We have data already

Partners we would like to work with

Tesla

Rockerfeller 100 Resilient Cities Network

Recycling Partnership

Proctor and Gamble

Adidas

WWF

Circular chain applies AI into ways, First, is to create an automated personalized carbon footprint calculator that is relevant to each user according to the location one is based (since carbon measurements are different across different locales), and second, we apply Computer Vision to help sort waste into distinct material types as required by waste management company (PET, HDPE, PVC, PP, PS, Glass, Organics) and this goes far beyond to help with recycling. Winning this prize, will go far in helping us achieve that in that (creating a personalized carbon footprint calculator & creating a computer vision waste sorting model). We will invest in data collection so that we can train our models with fast images and also in human capital with expertise in AI, to help with creation of automated system and waste sorting computer vision model.

Our focus at the moment is to bring our product to market as soon, and two factors that underpin this is Human Capital and Access to Market. Winning this prize, will enable us to onboard 3 more employees into the team, who are going to cut product delivery time by half and as well as build relationships with prospective clients. As a strategy of accessing our clients, we want to have memberships in circular & sustainability organizations alliances and networks like Circular Economy 100 hosted by Ellen McArthur Foundation, this way we can connect with our prospective clients easily; some memberships are free, some are paid, and we intend to use this prize to achieve this too.

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