Could NFTs Help Clean the Planet?

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2:11GM, GM, it's Web3 Wednesdays on Crypto Daily Briefing. And thank you for spending some time with me on this learning journey. I'm Elaine Lee, your friendly crypto host and producer at Real Vision. Now, before I bring in our guests, I want to talk to you about an exciting initiative at Real Vision. The Mint for Season 2 of the Real Vision Collective is happening right now. The aim of the Real Vision Collective is to bring all your favorite NFTs communities together while giving you the knowledge to navigate Web3. Season 2 is the next step in this journey. To create this collection, we've pulled artwork from nine of the most significant CCO projects out there and transformed them into three unique mashups.

2:53Now, if you want to help us building the super communities of NFTs, head over to realvision.com forward slash collective to learn more and mint your own season two NFT. Now, with that said, let's bring in our guests. Hello, and joining me today is Andre Van Yee Robin, co-founder and CEO of Plastics. Andre, welcome to the show and first time on Real Vision. Hello, Elaine. Hello. Thank you very much for inviting me. Very grateful to be here. And yes, it's my first time. Andre, I can promise you after this conversation, you will be involved with the Real Vision community for sure. Now, Andre, I speak to so many people, so many people who have big, big ideas, right, about how NFTs can rethink and change the world in how we interact in the business world.

3:40Sometimes they do sound like a million miles away with big, big ideas, but sometimes very real, which I think is something that you're building out over there. So it's a very real thing. It's real-life use cases, what I love having conversations about in the world of Web3. So why don't we start talking about, like, just a little bit more about yourself. How did the CryptoClick sort of happen for you? Well, the crypto click actually was a tool for the sustainability click, I guess. In December of 2018, you or your viewers may recall that the Amazon was on fire. The forest was burning and I was wondering what could I do as an ordinary person to try to help make a difference.

4:33and it was really heart-wrenching because I just came to the conclusion that no matter what I wanted to try to do, I couldn't do anything. I had to go about my life. I had to go and basically go to work, take care of the family, move on. So I sort of said, well, how can we solve this climate problem, at least from the plastics perspective? And I actually realized that companies are the ones who are responsible for putting the plastics into the market. So eventually, if we can enable companies to make sure that they recover the plastic, the users or the consumers are the ones who pick the products from companies that have actually proven to be committed to the environment, verifiably so.

5:18So in that sense, I said, OK, well, then basically what we need to do is we need to provide a tool so that companies can actually make sure they can recover plastics. And we need to make sure that consumers can know that the plastic is being recovered. And that way we can connect. And that's when I said, well, let's talk about plastics as a company. And well, we need to make sure that people know that funds are going to the plastic recovery projects. We need to know that if I'm going to do something, the money is going straight to the pockets of those that are actually doing something about plastic recovery.

5:57And that's where crypto walks in. Because ultimately, the underlying reason behind it was, well, if I'm going to make sure that money is being sent to a waste recovery project, I want to know that the waste recovery project, whether they're in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Africa, Latin America, or in Asia, are getting the money. And the transparency and traceability of a blockchain was the solution to that problem. So crypto was a tool to fight the plastic recovery problem. It was contrary to at the time, most projects would think, well, I have an idea in crypto. How can I make it fit into the real world?

6:35It was the real world problem is plastics. How can we solve that problem? Oh, the best tool, crypto, the best tool, blockchain. Okay, so from what I've heard that you've told me so far, it's very much the climate problem is still very real. You know, you see the fires out in Europe and you see the Californian fires. You sort of are aware of the problem very early on. And you definitely see the sort of opportunity that, okay, the thing to cut the middlemen out, crypto can very much solve that with blockchain technology. Now, you mentioned plastic. Obviously, your company is all about tackling plastic pollution.

7:14So what is plastic, which is your company, spelt with a K, of course, for the culture. So what is plastic and how exactly does it actually work? Well, Elaine, plastics is a marketplace where across the globe, waste recovery projects and waste management companies are able to generate a new source of funding. to be able to build out their infrastructure and improve their recycling rates. So the industry hasn't changed in 50 years. The basic revenue model for the waste management industry has always been collecting the waste, sorting it, and selling it as a feedstock to the recycling industry. So we came up to them and said, well, wait a minute.

8:01You can basically create the data that proves that you've recovered a certain amount of plastic, a certain type of plastic, and that you've actually delivered it to the recycler. So with your data, you can actually create a certificate that will prove that the plastic and the quantity of plastic recovered has not gone into the environment. And what is that data? Well, the invoice. Ultimately, for 50 years, the waste management industry has been collecting waste and sorting it and selling it to the recycler. So when they're selling the waste, they're issuing invoices. We said convert your invoice into an NFT, which is basically a certificate we call a plastic recovery guarantee, and put this plastic recovery guarantee, this NFT, up for sale on the plastics marketplace.

8:53So who would buy them? Well, companies would buy them for two reasons. The main one is if a company is using, producing, or distributing a certain type and amount of plastic, by buying these plastic recovery guarantees, essentially what they're doing is offsetting, is neutralizing their plastic footprint. And the second reason is from a corporate social responsibility exercise. By buying these plastic recovery guarantees, essentially what's happening is that they are funding the recovery of additional plastic because the money is going to the waste recovery project to do what? To buy new machinery, hire more waste pickers, open up a new geographical area to pick up more plastic waste, deploy medical camps to take care of the medical health of the waste pickers.

9:43So it's a measurable impact. And all of that by the simple fact of buying this plastic recovery guarantee, which for the most understanding is akin to a plastic credit. Yeah. So what I'm hearing is there's a whole recycling ecosystem if you get involved with plastic. And the thing is for any businesses or big enterprises out there to really have a sort of corporate social responsibility is so important in this day and age as we have to, you know, subconsciously live our lives every day with, you know, just being subconsciously aware of what's going on with our climate and with our environment.

10:18So let's take a look at the marketplace, as you said, in plastic. It doesn't feel like your regular NFT marketplace, doesn't feel like the open sea, doesn't feel like the blur or whatever is out there at the moment. And I'm seeing like, you know, there are projects for like$40. There are projects for$1 ,000. Like there's all this kind of stuff available out there. I mean, talk me through one of those. Is there one that you particularly like? And don't mention the FC Barcelona yet, because I'll get to that one. But just pick a project that you've gone out there right now. I mean, the artwork in itself is very organically as well, concentrating on environment.

11:00Pick a project and tell me about it. And what are they doing to tackle the whole climate problem? Well, I'd like to pick as an example Rosita Beer, Cerveza Rosita, as they say here in Spain. And Rosita Beer is basically a Catalan beer company that sells millions of bottles a year and they don't use plastics. But they wanted to make sure that they would be known for being committed to the environment. And they decided to pick a waste recovery project in India and to be able to fund this waste recovery project by buying$70 ,000 worth of plastic recovery guarantees or NFTs to deploy medical camps in the region of India where the waste pickers are actually operating.

11:52And what they wanted to do was to make sure that their consumers, when they're buying these Rosita beers, know effectively that Rosita, for every bottle that's being bought, there's a plastic bottle being recovered. And ultimately, they've decided to relabel their beer bottles with QR codes so that the consumers could actually check and verify, is it true that Rosita is really committed to the environment? And then click on the QR code and see effectively where the money is going, what project is being funded and what the impact is that is being made. So Rosita ultimately said, well, we are complying with local regulation, but we want to go beyond that.

12:38And we want to make sure that our community knows that we're committed to global plastic recovery. And that's why they decided to work with plastics. So that would be ultimately a good example of a project that I particularly like, without mentioning the other one. Hey, everyone. We're going to take a quick pause and hear our word from our partners. We'll be right back.

13:04No, we can get to it right now. And I love listening to you talk about that particular project, especially I put you on the spot there by picking out a favorite one, but definitely something that, you know, just listening to you, I would love to see like either a documentary being followed through or definitely just more documentation, you know, putting out there on your Twitter platform, which your account now has 20 ,000 followers. So we'd love to see and follow your journey throughout there. So I do see on the very front page of the plastics of your website right now that you are working with FC Barcelona.

13:37FC Barcelona, to me, in the Web3 space is very quite, very quite. Does that make sense? No, it's quite making a prominent sort of footprint in the world of Web3. You know, I am a huge World of Women fan and I know that obviously they have sort of worked with the World of Women there. and we're able to put an FC jersey shirt on the World of Women PFP. So what are you doing over there with football clubs? I know you're messing with hotels as well. And I've read that if you buy one of their NFTs, then you get to claim back whatever they're offering on the website. But tell me about the partnership with FC Barcelona.

14:11This seems to be my team has put up with the one with FC Barcelona there and the females project that they got. But tell me about your partnership with FC Barcelona. How did that happen and what that means for you? Oh, well, first of all, the word grateful is not big enough to represent how we feel about the partnership with FC Barcelona. Ultimately, FC Barcelona obviously complies with their stadium regulation and recovering plastic for every game. They have a huge infrastructure in making sure that their games are sustainable. But what they wanted to do is they wanted to leverage their brand and say, look, we're a global brand and we want to help recover plastic at a global level.

14:57And ultimately, we want to empower our community to be part of plastic recovery. So they said, OK, we're going to do a NFT collection and offer this NFT collection to their community, which will obviously provide them with the uniqueness of the collectible item, the digital collectible, access to benefits such as entering a drawing to have one of the shirts, I believe 12 or 13 shirts of the team that have been signed off by all of the players, the drawing, having access to special benefits. For example, getting tweeted your name on the birthday, a whole series of benefits that they have. But more importantly, linking those NFTs to what?

15:42Plastic recovery guarantees related to projects in Chile, Kenya and India. Because what they want to do is they want to recover plastic in those regions. And they want fans not only to relate to Football Club Barcelona, but directly be empowered to recover plastics by buying these NFTs. And so after having gone through extensive research for Web3 sustainability partners, we were fortunate enough to be selected by Football Club Barcelona to actually be the platform upon which they would issue these NFTs, these digital collectibles that would be linked to waste recovery projects in the four nations that I've talked about.

16:25Actually, three nations, four projects in three nations, Chile, Kenya and India. And over the course of the next three years, their commitment is to recover one million kilos of plastic, which I do want to take this moment to say we wanted to establish the price of recovering a kilo at a dollar, Because what we didn't want were the waste pickers in developing nations to be exposed to the volatility of pricing of waste recovery projects. Ultimately, the carbon credit is endemic for speculation. So what we wanted to say, zero speculation on the actual recovery of plastic. So when a waste picker is collecting a kilo, they're going to get paid their dollar minus our transaction fee, which is 20 percent, because we are ultimately the verification body.

17:17That's our job. We verify, according to our own methodology, that these projects are allowed to issue these NFTs. And then we do the auditing to make sure that the monies generated from the sale of these NFTs are going towards what we call roadmaps. buying the machinery, hiring more waste pickers, increasing the salaries of the waste pickers, opening up new geographical areas, deploying medical camps, et cetera. So 80 % of the funds goes to the waste recovery project. We know this because it's blockchain. You see the money going straight to the wallet. And ultimately, Barca said, we're going to work with plastics because we know that their plastic recovery guarantee is verifiable and traceable.

17:57And that was the great opportunity for them to empower their community, leverage their brand to actually have an impact on plastic recovery at a global level. And tell me about the art. How does that partnership sort of come together? And then once you sort of explain to me, like, you know, how you pick the sort of artists and then I just want to, I want you to tell me about, well, how do you get involved with plastic? Say like, if you have an initiative, you've always been caring about the environment and you have an idea and they want to come to you, how would you start that kind of journey with plastics?

18:29Well, I'd like to distinguish different personas, right? So you've got brands, you've got companies and communities like Football Club Barcelona or like Rosita that say, we want to do something for the environment. And we are going to say, how much budget do we have to recover plastic? Or how big is our community, our fan base, so that we can enable to recover plastic? So that's what they would do. And then you've got the actual waste recovery projects that say, well, until plastics arrived, my only source of funding was to actually pick up the plastic and sell it as a physical product. Now I know that I can sell the proof that I've recovered it and put it back into the recycling industry.

19:15So essentially, I can build my waste recovery process by issuing NFTs so I can fund the growth of my project and fund the growth of plastic recovery. So then they need to, they contact us and then they, what they do is get through a verification process, which we obviously have our own methodology and we measure them in compliance to that methodology. And then the third persona is the artist. So the artist basically is either on their own saying, I have an art collection, I want to create digital art, and I want to make sure that whoever buys my art is going to pick up and recover plastic, or their art is being acquired by one of the brands so that they can leverage their art to be able to recover plastic.

20:02And ultimately, why art? And why do we also talk about the art of recycling? We talk about the art of recycling because the emotional connection that art elicits in people is what we're trying to connect with plastic recovery. So essentially, an emotional connection to a real commitment to the environment is what we're trying to elicit. The power of art is to say, oh, I'm emotionally connected to recovering plastic. Oh, by the way, it's beautiful. Hey, everyone. We're going to take another quick break and hear a word from our partners. We'll be right back to the Real Vision Crypto Daily Briefing.

20:41I think you've put the nail on the head about why we like collecting stuff, right, in this day and age, and especially if it comes with a purpose. That is definitely probably something worth your time looking a bit into as well. So let's move on to dig in a little bit into the tech side of things. You know, what chain on the blockchain are you sort of using this to provide the traceability component of the NFT? Is it Ethereum or how does it work? Because I think I went onto the website and I think I got as far as basically connecting my MetaMask wallet. And then it's asking me to sort of onboard some plastic token.

21:18So what blockchain is it using this whole ecosystem in plastic? So we decided to actually deploy plastics on the CILO blockchain. And the reason we deployed it on CILO blockchain was, first of all, from a philosophical perspective, from the birth of CILO, they were always impact driven. Always impact driven in reducing carbon footprint and in recovering plastic and doing measurable activities in Web3 for the environment. So from a philosophical perspective, it was a match made in heaven. From a technical perspective, CILO had structured a proof-of-stake protocol, which had a very close to zero carbon footprint.

22:02And whatever carbon footprint point of proof-of-stake has, they had a smart contract commitment to buy carbon credits to offset that carbon footprint. So effectively, CILO is zero carbon footprint because of their smart contract commitment to buy carbon credits. And of course, combining that with their proof of stake protocol. So and then the third one was because they have a very strong social impact in developing nations to facilitate onboarding and offboarding into the real world. by, for example, their wallet called Ballora, not requiring the 12 password, the 12 words to be able to have your wallet.

22:45So to really make it easy to interact with the blockchain. So for these three reasons, we decided to build plastics on the CILO blockchain. Now I'm learning a lot myself. I just quickly logged on to CILO.org. I've never actually heard of it, but just logging quickly onto the website, it is a bit of a match made in heaven for your company. It says CILO is the carbon negative, mobile-first EVM-compatible blockchain ecosystem, leading a thriving new digital economy for all. And it gives you an option of Build with Celo and just going on their Twitter. They have 449 ,000 followers. Very, very interesting.

23:23How are you being funded at the moment? Can I ask that? Sure. Are you happy to talk about that? Sure, sure. So basically when we launched the token in September of 2021, until June of 2022, we sold$3 million worth of plastics token. And then recently we received another million dollars from equity investment from a big fund. And we received about$500 ,000 from different funds across the world, in Israel, in New York, in London. We've also received funding from Google to fund the AI fraud detection. on the NFT creation process. If you remember going back to the beginning of our conversation, the bottom line behind everything we do is the invoice.

24:18It's the invoice that a waste recovery project is issuing when they're selling the plastic that they've recovered to the recycler. So converting this invoice, basically number of invoice, date of invoice, type of plastic, quantity of plastic, and the destination of this plastic, those five data points are the ones that are going on the blockchain. So to scale at a global level, and we are working in 16 countries, we're working with Google hand in hand. We will be deploying in October the version of the AI fraud detection on these plastic recovery guarantees, which is the name we give to our plastic credits.

24:52And so we're very grateful to work with Google on the tech side as well. So that's, if you wish, a landscape of how we've been to date. That's a lot. That's a lot of alpha, they would say, in this world right there. So thank you for that. What role do you sort of see plastics playing in the broader global effort to reduce plastic waste and solution? How big are we talking here? Well, I'd like to actually underline that we're partners with the World Economic Forum. They've featured us in their annual report last year as a viable... Thank you. Thank you. We're very proud of that and very grateful for plastic traceability, plastic recovery traceability.

25:40And ultimately, our aspiration is to be the reference in plastic recovery guarantees. I mean, ultimately, what we've done, and we're unique on the planet for this, is combining blockchain with accounting. Again, the invoice and developing all the necessary security measures to make sure that the invoices are legitimate, to make sure that the funds are being transferred for the payment of these invoices, to make sure that the funds generated from the sale of the NFTs are going to the waste recovery projects to do what they say they're going to do on the roadmaps. So our aspiration is to be the world reference and plastic recovery guarantees.

26:16And that's what we're working for. And Barcelona Football Club is an amazing credibility validation. However, I do want to say that we've got quite a few of other high profile teams to be announced that we're working with, will be working with, as well as world brands. So our goal is to definitely continue this path. Very exciting things coming down the pipeline. And I'll be sitting on the edge of my seats watching this for sure. um andre you know employee and community engagement is so crucial for the success of any company you know how does plastic engage with its employees and local communities where it operates i think that's something that we need to discuss when we talk about growing so at such an exponential rate right well i i'd like to take advantage of the fact that we are working in 16 countries in 16 local communities and that we're having absolutely measurable and verifiably measurable impact in the communities by providing medical care in India, by providing the funding for electric transportation, for building parks in Brazil, for the children of the waste pickers, for providing uniforms.

27:38We are really impacting the lives of all of those that we're working with. I'd like to underline that we are working with all these waste recovery projects in developing nations because the waste management infrastructure is not developed as it is in Europe or in North America. And we ultimately, from our mission, is to embed plastic recovery in every economic transaction. And as such, it's to be able to provide the source of funding for developing the waste management infrastructure in developing nations to improve their recycling rates without having to be subject to grant funding for these projects, local support.

28:23So it's really taking capitalism and interweaving it with waste recovery, plastic waste recovery. And that's how we think that we have provided a solution to the problem of funding waste recovery in developing nations. How big is the team at the moment? We're 20 right now. We're 20. Most of us, 16 of us, are based out of Barcelona, Spain. Three of us in Scandinavia and one in New York. Wonderful. No time ever for your siesta just yet. No, I'm kidding. Always health is wealth. Remember here on Real Vision. By the way, viewers, put down your questions in the chat. We're going to be asking the best ones to air.