An environmental reporting, certification, and rewards ecosystem designed to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon, circular economy
Waste is codified into a unique digital asset on the blockchain at the moment of waste pick-up, recording material qualities, location, stakeholders involved and work performed. MassIDs are updated along waste logistical routes, establishing a chain of custody that helps to reward all who contributed to recycling a unit of waste.
(Proof-of-Provenance and Proof-of-Physical-Work)
MassIDs are multi-party validated through chain of custody transactions and recycling is certified by third-party Auditors. Good behavior is enforced through a penalty system that flags the bad actor and financially penalizes all participants associated with that actor by blocking MassIDs from being sold within Recycling Credits and Carbon Credits.
(Proof-of-Authority)
Certified-recycled MassIDs are packaged into fungible, 1 ton equivalent Tokenized Recycling Credits (TRCs) and Tokenized Carbon Credits (TCCs). Because each Credit is backed by unique MassIDs that anyone can verify on a public blockchain, they become the most transparent and trusted environmental offset and investment vehicle in the world.
(Proof-of-Environmental-Work)
Buyers and sellers of recycling credits and carbon credits, meet in an efficient marketplace (Liquidity Pools) where the value of environmental offsets are determined in real time. The sale of TRCs and TCCs introduces new funding into the recycling economy, distributing rewards to each recycling contributor instantly and improving recycling rates broadly across all waste (now resource) verticals.
Stablecoins are distributed to the wallets of individuals and businesses for the environmental work provided, in accordance with their contribution in each TRC or TCC, and serve as an incentive for others to begin recycling and earning rewards as well. Stable coins can then be exchanged for $CARROT tokens which provide voting rights over the procotol and enable participation in stewarding and growing the future of the ecosystem.
(Recycle-to-Earn)
Recycling Credits that are removed from the market permanently through token "burning" are retired to a decentralized, public ledger that can be used by companies to prove compliance with ESG goals and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mandates.
(Zero Waste Registry and Leaderboard)
Waste management and logistics applications integrate with the Carrot Protocol (via APIs) and submit supply chain and material and product data that are validated by Carrot's verification models.
ProductIDs and MassIDs are created on an immutable, distributed ledger technology (DLT) network that stores events recorded in the field. IDs are tracked along the supply chain, recording the chain of custody, until they reach a homologated recovery center for recycling or reuse.
Carrot then applies a dMRV (digital Measurement, Reporting and Verification) process for issuing Tokenized Recycling Credits (TRCs) and Tokenized Carbon Credits (TCCs) from certified recycled or reuse work.
Independent third-party Auditors verify supply chain and recycling facility data to certify MassIDs as recycled, measure environmental gain against Carrot's peer-reviewed methodologies, and issue credits using Carrot's smart contracts.
The purchase and retirement of TRCs and TCCs helps companies meet ESG goals and/or EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) mandates while returning corresponding value to all of the recycling contributors
stored in the chain-of-custody of each MassID or ProductID. Rewards help drive investment into the recycling economy in an efficient manner and encourage people and businesses to sort, recycle, compost, and reuse.
An incentive mechanism is designed into reward algorithms to encourage haulers, processors, and recyclers to digitize supply chains fully, extending chain of custody tracking all the way to the source of waste creation (i.e., the waste generator).
Sorting waste properly at the point of creation is the key action needed to ensure that a highly performant, zero-waste, low-cost, low-carbon circular economy can be formed.
The benefits are many and include: significant savings to the government (clean-up, hauling, landfilling, incineration, and healthcare); preservation of finite raw materials; reduced greenhouse gas emissions from avoided extraction, processing, and supply chain activities as well as those related to landfilling; contained pollution to the environment through greater participation in sorting; regeneration of topsoil through the use of compost; and an astounding 290X in green (circular economy) jobs generation, to name a few.
