 the recording really quick. So just one thing that we like we start with every single meeting is reviewing the the hyperledger code of conduct as well as our antitrust policy notice. This is really just more focused on making sure that hyperledger is creating a safe and welcoming community for all. So I do encourage especially if this is the first time for you to join us today just to briefly review this and obviously all this information is accessible at any point on our meeting agendas as well as right off of our hyperledger social impact sig wiki page. So please do take a quick look at that and then we'll quickly get started in another minute. And Alicia one quick thing could you help me take note of all the participants that are on the call today we just want to add that to it. I can do that thank you. Thank you so much. All right so let's let's just get started for right now since we're going to be recording it I think folks that can't make it today will be able to to also review it. So just one quick announcement for the overall team and the community is the hyper hack event that we're actually going to be co-organizing with hyperledger India chapter. That's going to take place between March 21st all the way until April 5th. So if you know of any student groups that are working and hacking for impact please encourage them to register and also if you know of any corporate sponsors or university sponsors that might be interested in working with us on that please do have them reach out. So that could be a pretty interesting event that we're going to be hosting. Oh hey hey Bobby just saw you raise your hand. Yeah real quick on that I did talk to the people over at the government blockchain association and they are extending the deadline for submissions to August so all the events in the hackathon will be able to apply for that award. Excellent great excellent. More information to the group next next time we meet but I definitely got it it's definitely August would be the date for the submissions now. Okay that sounds great and then Bobby I don't want to volunteer you for anything but I was wondering if you would be interested in working with like the teams that are selected on helping position them for that award. Absolutely no problem. Okay we'll definitely put you down for that. Thank you. And Arun I think I just saw you raise your hand briefly. Oh that was this applauding so thanks Bobby for that effort I look forward to more information from you. Thank you Arun. All right so I think we were really here to talk about one really revolutionary project that on the the covalence carbon traceability story and I think for the group here we've had a couple conversations about this. I think we all noticed quite a few articles on this on the greater web. Oh okay awesome so Karen's actually going to make this live on YouTube. I'm going to try. I'm going to try. Awesome not guaranteed. If you do I'll tweet the link. Yeah either way we'll upload it but we've been trying to do this for our meetings now and sometimes it works so we have some permissions thing so hopefully it'll work. So Karen you are co-host right now do you want me to make you the host? Yeah that's why I sent you the message I need to be host to do it. All right let me do this. So when Mark or I want to share our screen do you have to make us like a co-host at that moment? I think you should be able to but I'm going to share their screen. Yeah you should be able to see that. Yes okay you see that yeah okay I do a button yep okay cool. All right awesome so Karen should we give you a minute? No it's okay it's okay. Okay awesome all right sounds good all right so you know I so you know Deborah like I reached out to you because you know we have been talking a lot about this project I think we have folks that have been working in the carbon traceability that are really concerned with some of these issues that this project is really targeting and I think it's really putting as the forefront of the innovation on the blockchain end so you know this has been something that we're keeping you know really really interested in and we've been really looking forward to this for a few weeks now. I don't know if it would be best so Deborah would you like for me to introduce you guys or would you like to introduce yourself? Uh we're flexible I guess we could I guess we can introduce ourselves. All right sounds good. So I'm Debbie Keston Schillkraut. I've been the Global Program Director for Blockchain Ecosystem Marketing and Blockchain for Good for the last few years and I am very passionate about sustainability and making this world a lot better and I'm thrilled to have with us Mark Herrima from New Light Technologies and his genius and the amazing Ron Argent and Bill Stark both from Cognition Foundry who are on with us today one of our incredible business partners very devoted to a lot of blockchain for good so I'll have them each say a quick hello here as well. Good Mark. Yeah thanks guys I'm really happy to be here IBM has been a great partner for New Light and what we've been trying to do for the past few years as well as Cognition Foundry so um yeah excited to talk about the journey that we've been on and what we're hoping to accomplish. Ron I think you're on with us CEO of Cognition Foundry just look like you're on mute Ron's on mute but um Ron Argent is the CEO of Cognition Foundry he's on with us as well um and he's incredible are you there? I'm sorry about that Debbie. Okay go ahead. Technology was defeating me uh yes so uh I'm Ron Argent CEO of Cognition Foundry um my background so I had 31 years of IBM and that's where my my my love almost my understanding of enterprise systems comes from and the last um last six years or so our six seven years been working with uh with startups to look at how we can use technology primary IBM's technology to help bring their ideas to life and to the market and uh met Mark must have been four years ago now um love Mark's idea and I could just see you know Mark wanted to to bring blockchain onto the platform and been working with Mark since that point Bill. Nancy should we just run into it or do you have other announcements? No please proceed. Okay okay great so I'm gonna share my screen uh in just a moment here with just just a few slides as uh an introduction but um first of all we want to thank Nancy and and the Hyperledger um special interest group here for having us here today um IBM has had a long-standing commitment to the environment and being a responsible corporation as it pertains to the environment and as I mentioned I personally along with my business colleagues here are really excited to share the solution with you um and as it's been evolving uh all of us were kind of chomping at the bed I think to share the story so as I mentioned I've been leading blockchain for good initiatives at IBM and it's all about leverage leveraging the technology working with our clients and business partners to help as many people as possible with critical solutions that support the UNSTGs and to have a positive impact on as many lives as possible um so um you know we've been hearing and seeing in a lot of the research that the Institute for Business Value that IBM runs as well as other third-party research organizations really seeing that more and more of the consumers out there are seeing how important it is to support a purpose economy and how important it is for transparency and responsibility in the products that we buy so I think uh you know the time has come and is is growing more in terms of the importance in this space so again really excited to to share that with you um so let me just see if my screen will share real quick um and I'm not going to take you through a lot of slides it's just more of a uh overview to set the stage here and let me get into screen show okay so as I mentioned the UNSTGs we're all familiar with it if you're on this call and you're in this group um the clearly consumers are speaking loud and clear in terms of believing that brand 75% believe that brands can change society for the better um and 55% of those that were surveyed you know feel that brands are forced for positive change they're really looking for you know the companies today to be giving back positively to society and 51% are willing to pay more for products and services from a socially responsible company I've actually seen that 51% number go up in a bunch of other studies so I'll probably update this slide next time I present it um but IBM every year comes out with uh five uh you know areas that we it's our research division that you know represent areas that we radically want to support and things that we predict um and if you saw this from IBM in Q4 of this past year it's about you know radically accelerating the process for enabling a more sustainable future so this fits right into that you know our mission as a company is to help our clients and partners change the the world and the way it works but we really also want to help support the UN sustainability development goals and this whole issue around capturing and storing transforming CO2 to mitigate client change is is very much a big topic so blockchain for good is really about having that single source of truth I know I'm talking to the choir here you know immutable tamper proof results um you know creating new models for change what we love about this new light uh technologies uh client here with us is um and mark will tell you a little bit more about you know you know what he's done and how he's he's he's brought it to life um is this vision about how you know the greenhouse gases can uh be converted into materials that will help us improve our world and I know that if you're a sense of about the environment like I am you know it's cringe-worthy for me when I go places and and you know people automatically give me a straw you know if I don't want a straw so my my family I've been very proactive when we have sat down at a restaurant in person when we can and we're not in COVID shut down to you know say up front like no straws for the table that kind of thing anyway one of the two lines that new lights put out is called restore um and it's uh it it it's uh again a biodegradable uh cutlery that's available so the challenge here is really about you know the issues that we're facing with climate change and plastic and and and other you know pollutants into our landfills and our environment and how the demand unfortunately for plastic in particular has been on the rise you know with all the shutdown that's been going on and people doing takeout um we've seen all the extra you know containers and forks and cutlery and things that are being put out by the restaurants who are just trying to survive um and then we've started to find restaurants on our own um that are using you know biodegradable materials or we're just trying not to water out at all um because we're just seeing that that demand has just been really impacted um so anyway the solution here is about identifying a cost-effective scalable solution to reduce the pace of things like plastic accumulation uh in the world's oceans and in our landfills and reducing greenhouse gas levels um through this carbon capture process that you'll hear about and where IBM blockchain comes into play is to validate and and verify and create an endelba record about that transformation of of the greenhouse gases um and then the other product line you'll hear about is is covalent which is the one you've seen in our recent press release together with new light and cognition foundry um for a sustainable alternative to the luxury fashion market and and how blockchain can help track and verify that so i i'll make these slides available for you know whoever needs them for afterwards but you know you're going to hear now from from mark herama the co-founder of new light and then uh who's going to tell you about about the technology itself and how it came to be and how it works and then ron's going to share with you the technology stack and what he's put together with his team uh to support um you know what mark wanted to do with blockchain from uh both an IBM blockchain platform as well as linux one and system z perspective it's a really a hybrid cloud solution so you'll hear about that you'll have our contact information and then you know for more information and go back we've got these links for you in terms of our recent press release mark's recent blog um an interview um that the three of us did together very recently in q4 and other links to more blockchain information and how to reach us so i just wanted to share uh those things with you and um turn it over to mark uh to tell you a little bit more great thank you so much for that um yes i'm going to pull up my screen here just give me one second try also not to be defeated by technology here okay everybody see that all right all right so um our story started uh many years ago i've read a newspaper article about uh methane emissions from cows and um i've always really been intrigued by this idea of trying to solve problems by by finding the the things that we agree on um and and that idea feels like it has um become ever more pertinent today but um the idea was that you know when i read this newspaper article it talked about how much methane each each cow was burping uh of all things and a lot of us you know we all know about methane from cows but what was really striking about this article and what was different was that it talked about the specific amount per day and that was about 600 liters per cow per day well why that mattered was because it was quantifiable and so you could you could take 600 liters and you could do math and you could say okay well that that equates to about 20 per cow per year well that might not sound like a lot but if you've got a thousand cows you know that's 20 000 of methane into the air every year and so what what struck would struck me and i and i quickly called a friend uh my friend kent and kimmel who was he was studying uh biomedical engineering at northwestern at the time and i said look everyone's talking about taxing or burying carbon but this is also just a material resource you know what if we could find a way to take carbon that would otherwise go into the air whether that's from methane or carbon dioxide and use it as a resource and use it to make products first of all that's what nature does every day but second of all that if we could do that potentially we could come up with a consumer driven pathway to reducing the amount of carbon in the air a way that we could all participate in in trying to help uh solve for for too much carbon in the air so it started with this article and and it started this chain of thinking well okay so there's a there's a quantifiable amount of just material material going into the air oops being defeated by technology and and and we also then said okay well certainly for you know for farms that's a big deal but where else is this being emitted and we looked at landfills and said okay there's a ton of methane being emitted from landfills what about all the flares if you look at pictures of the united states uh from space at night you see these vast areas where there of course is a lot of light because they're cities but then you see other areas that look just as bright and big as cities but in fact there's no cities there these are just flares and so there's an absolutely enormous amount of of carbon going into the air every year by virtue of a flaring and then of course power plants uh where we're where we're just putting um massive amounts of carbon and again the sheer weight of carbon into the air and so we said you know okay right now we view this as a bad thing but what if we what if we flip the script what if instead of carbon being just categorically a bad thing what if we could turn it into a good thing um and so we asked this question what if what if there was another pathway and as soon as you look in nature you find out that in fact greenhouse gas and in particular greenhouse gas in air and water is in many ways the foundation of life um and so you have these massive trees and those are made by pulling this invisible gas out of the air if you look in the ocean it's these beautiful things that you see these are all made by pulling carbon uh dissolved from greenhouse gas in the water and pulling them out of the water and turning them into these these materials that we see and then at the bottom of the ocean you've got whole communities that are growing uh off of off of um things like methane in the water and so this this we find out very quickly that that greenhouse gas is very much a part of creating and sustaining and growing life um and so we said all right what if what if we could mimic that what if we could use greenhouse gas emissions as a resource and if we did that potentially have a pathway where in the same way that when you grow a tree leaf it's a carbon negative process what if when we carried out our process the more materials we made the more we improve the world and so it was trying to take this sort of new paradigm that instead of being less bad what if we could actually go to the other side of the column and create products that actively heal the environment or improve it so we started with you know a funny idea a long long time ago this was literally the the the garage where we where we started and then we found some university laboratory space and worked on the tech for a little bit of time about a year and a half and then with that initial data and experience we we built our first pilot plant I love this this picture it was our our empty room when we started and we started to to work the technology it kept getting incrementally bigger and bigger this was back in 2006 or 2007 when we were building out our one of our first pilot lines and over time we we completed that and we're able to show that we could operate a technology capable of turning greenhouse gas into a material and I'll talk about what that what that is um so our our our goal was to figure out not just how to make a material from greenhouse gas but but most importantly to figure out how to make something that could truly scale and so what we learned early on was that there are microorganisms that exist in the ocean that eat methane and carbon dioxide as their food source and when they do that one of the things that they make is a really special material called phb now phb is a molecule that almost all known life makes and we we all make it as a high high concentration energy source so in fact humans do it too we're all we have phb in our in our bodies right now um but plants and animals and microorganisms make this too so what we set out to do is to figure out how to feed greenhouse gas using renewable power to these microorganisms and get them to make phb at at at in a way where we could scale it and actually bring it out into the world well this is a lot easier said than done and it took us a long time to figure out how to do that efficiently but over many years of work we eventually kept improving the technology this is what it looked like after a number of years of of effort uh the the line on the left was one of our first pilot lines ran about a half of football field in length and then after a number of advancements we we figured out how to do that in about 30 feet of length um and so finally we had a technology that gave us the ability not just to convert greenhouse gas into phb this special material um in a cost effective way but also in a high performance way and so finally we had a material here that number one is natural um it's made in living things um two in part because of that it's FDA approved um and third because it's made in nature if it ends up in nature nature sees it almost like a food source and so it degrades it just like it does a leaf from a tree fourth point because we use renewable power and greenhouse gas to make it we have a net carbon negative process and we'll talk about why that led us to blockchain but as importantly because this material is a meltable material you can use it to replace lots of things including plastics that also makes it recyclable if there's sufficient material density in the area um it's high strength you can use it in hot and cold conditions and at the end of the day there's no plastic so we're not creating micro plastics and all the things that go along with that so a really interesting material that is made in the ocean every single day and and we're now figuring out how to make it on land so once we figured out sort of the the basic uh components of the technology we kept working at figuring out how to make it do different things give it different colors working our pilot plan finally after about 10 years of work we scaled this up to a meaningful um uh scale so it went from a 10 foot tall reactor to what you see here which is roughly a 50 foot tall reactor and this was super important for us because not only did it show that we could operate this at at commercially relevant scale but also it gave us enough material to introduce products out into the world and so we did that we started to introduce uh chairs made with air carbon cell phone cases to show that we could we could use this material to replace you know fairly large volume product types um but we also realized uh something very important which was that if this material ended up in the ocean it would actually degrade as fast or faster than cellulose which is the primary component of a paper and so it gave us these kind of two really big value traits one ocean degrade ability and two carbon negativity um so we started by launching uh last year the world's first regenerative foodware products so these are all made with air carbon there's no plastic in in these products so if they do and we hope they never end up in the environment but if they do they'll go away like an organic material um but in the meantime uh as as debu was sort of alluding to you can actually reuse these these happen to be um the molecule that we make just happens to be dishwasher safe so you can reuse it over and over again you don't have to throw it away but if you do it will go away and um and that's something that that's really important to us and sometimes people ask well how can it be dishwasher safe but ocean degradable uh the reason is that water doesn't do anything to the to the this molecule and so you can use it over and over again your dishwasher it won't break down until it has microorganisms and nutrients to eat it and so unless you're growing a geopet off of your your your foodware products um it's not going to be breaking down so really special product and right now we've been launching uh straws and and cutlery and not just great from an end of life perspective but also these are regenerative products so they have a net carbon negative footprint um and we've been really excited to bring online our first commercial scale plant um what we call Eagle 3 and we did that last year and that's now giving us the ability to really produce this material at at larger scale and and and help us create the impact that we wanted but one of the really important impact areas that we also wanted was to show people um that you can hold carbon that would otherwise be in the air in your hands and if you can do that we think it should cause people to ask well okay if we can do that why why do we have to let carbon go into the air why can't we come together and help solve this problem um and so this this plant helps us helps us do that and one of the products that we've launched here is our carbon negative or regenerative fashion so this is um air carbon leather and it's something that's that's really important to us because um you know single use products are are great and we we are deeply passionate about trying to solve the ocean plastics problem in this generation but but the oceans are not just getting destroyed from uh plastic pollution we're on pace to lose half of our coral reefs by 2050 and that's not because of plastic pollution that's because of climate change and and warming ocean waters and so if you're going to address the oceans you can't just focus on plastics you also have to address the amount of carbon in the air these products on a net basis reduce the amount of carbon in the air when we make them um and and three years ago we we said to ourselves you know it's kind of hard to to say that to somebody and number one avoid what anybody should do which is be a little bit skeptical and say well how do I really know you're telling me these are carbon negative um how do I verify that and we recognize that that was that was a problem and also when I say hey look this was a long journey to make this and and also a lot of steps went into this um it's hard it's hard for somebody to to visualize those and really sort of make that tangible and so um we came across a I can't remember I think it was a news article or a web link or something about blockchain and we said you know this could actually really be a great thing for us because with blockchain we could do two things we could we could help convey the all the steps that went into making this product and do that on a very product specific basis so not just generally what we generally do but for that product that you're holding what journey did it go on and then secondly we'd have a way to uh basically tag each one of these products with its very specific carbon impact and do that in a third party verified way and so what you see on the on the bottom right here is a number and I'm going to expand the screen here but this number is what we call our carbon date but but you might also refer to it as our blockchain number because with this number you can plug it into our blockchain tracking system and when you do that you can see all the steps in the in the process so here's a more expanded view of that and so this this is a actually a date so you got your year your month your day and then your your hour minute and second and so every single product that we make in the covalent space they all have a unique number here and and that time is associated with the time that the air carbon used to make this specific product was was generated and so we have our website here we've launched a brand called covalent it's it's based off of the covalent bond which is the the bond found in nature it's one of the strongest bonds found in nature but it's made by by effectively sharing good and that's really the the basis of of what we're trying to do with you know using greenhouse gas as a force or source for good and so you see this little symbol up on the left here when you when you press that it opens up this page and this allows you to use blockchain to type in that that carbon date on your product you type it in and when you do that up pops a your your product and so this is the this is my wallet and if i if i type in this number here my wallet comes up so you see the the product type this has a really cool specific texture on it and then you can click through each one of these these areas and when you do that there's a little description it also shows the exact date and time of of when these things happened but perhaps most importantly for us when you do that it shows the exact carbon footprint which in this case is negative 0.083 kilograms of of CO2e and then also who independently certified that and so now when i say hey this is a carbon negative product you say oh that's cool but how do i believe that i say well here type in this number and so it's so exciting to us because you know a lot of times when we think about products and their environmental impact in many cases it's a very generalized statement you know we're trying to be 30% less emissions or these are more sustainable materials but i think there's a bit of consumer fatigue because it's like okay well what does that mean and also what about this specific product what what's in that and so we're trying to sort of advance the conversation and say what if we could use blockchain technology to kind of cut through some of the generalities and give people really specific information and and by virtue of making it so specific make it actionable if someone knows that this t-shirt it results in the use of 700 liters of water and you can see that really clearly and this t-shirt right next to it results in seven liters it might not impact your decision making or it might but it gives you the choice and and we think give people the opportunity to see the data and then let let them decide and we think that that that over time will lead towards consumers being able to really participate and and change how things are done and thus change our impact on the environment so we've been super excited to work with IBM and Cognition Foundry to to get this set up we launched it in September of last year and and it's been really fun it's been really joyful actually to to see these products out in the world and and be able to talk about how specific they are in terms of of their individual impact so I'll end there but it's been been a great journey and we've really appreciated our work with IBM and Cognition Foundry to get to this point. Thank you Mark so then we thought we'd have Ron share a little bit about the technology stack that went into supporting this vision so Ron turn it to you. Thanks Mark. Hi Debbie thanks Mark. I love the word you use there Mark joyful and it really I think it really says something about you as a character and might so so lovely and remarkable to work with you because you know what you're trying to is bring joy into the world and so the relationship between Mark and myself started as I say three or four years ago when Mark said his idea said what he was trying to do and it was about you know about this trust and transparency you know how do you do that and how do you engage with a large element society you know the world because Mark hasn't talked about is the extension of this idea but it's really how do you keep engaging with people and and not just on his own product range but how do you do beyond that and how do you link things so I heard I heard a few things one was the trust and transparency which is where blockchain comes into it you know blockchain being immutable shared data but also scalability and security was important and you know my background here in IBM helped because you know my whole career has been based around building working on scalable systems and banking and financing government and when someone's got an idea as big as Mark's you know to change the world you need big technology so I just when we when we first started I just learned about about blockchain I know it's been around for some years with blockchain with bitcoin but bitcoin was had like bad press it was all about you know speculation all about using energy you know the amount of energy it takes to to use one bitcoin is the equivalent to I think a day's energy in Los Angeles so it was the last thing I read so there was bits about about blockchain that didn't quite fit with with the message that Mark was trying to to give so I looked at it and thought well there's different ways of doing this and I looked at different technologies and the one was just being introduced was a was a consortium with IBM Intel Fujitsu Sashi lots of other people called Hyperliter and this was it it was a consortium of large organizations that looked at taking the blockchain technology into the future and this was another element where I thought it fitted ideally with what Mark was trying to do you know having something that's future proof not having something that just happens today but having something that you can build on and that would grow at the same size and speed and scale that he wanted to so so we selected the Hyperledger platform for our blockchain implementation and in terms of scalability and security you know my background in IBM said there was only one real answer for that and that was the the traditional old mainframe technology that has been repackaged by IBM to something called Linux one so it's exactly the same technology that enables the big big banks financial institutions governments to scale up to tremendous scale but you know it's very efficient very green in its use so you know whereas you might you might require hundreds or thousands of servers in in alternative implementations we use a single server to scale up very very large ideas so so that really dictated the technology stack was to use infrastructure that was hugely scalable hugely secure so you know if you're working in a bank or a government you want military grade security and this is what the the IBM platform provides so you get the security and the scale and more importantly anything else simplicity because as Mark shows if you look to his initial diagram you'll see things were scaling up and he was putting another thing beside something else beside something else so his initial factory was was a row of things and you have legend skating that that up to to satisfy the huge that huge demand that the new light is going to have and covenants going to have so mark has simplified it by condensing it down into a single thing and he's going to grow those things over and over so the technology approach is very very similar you don't you don't scale out using small things you use use technologies have got huge capacity for scale and use those because it drives down energy and it keeps things simple which means all resources around the solution are optimized so the technology stack we use is the IBM Linux one server based on premise so when we started it was based on premise because of geographic geographical considerations because cognition foundry is based in the UK mark and new lights are based in in hunting the beach in in California we we expanded into the IBM cloud so we we supply most of Mark's computing from a data sensor in the US but done in a very in a very shared way without on-premise solution so we've actually got a hybrid cloud solution where where we have got a seamless operation between our on-premise Linux one machines and the little machines that are actually in the IBM cloud so that gives us a rounded solution which means that we can we can implement new on-premise solutions if that's required so if mark if mark expands around the world he can have on-premise solutions to run this solution or we can expand into the cloud so in Asia in Europe in Africa and and use the the scalability and the expansion that the technology can provide either on-premise or in cloud I hope that was a it's a sick enough explanation Debbie but if you need more information I can I can do some more yeah that's great I thought what we would do is open it up to questions uh since we've each had a chance to share a little bit about about this amazing solution so Nancy if you want we could open it up to questions that sounds great so you know for folks that have questions I think or if you can just unmute yourself you can directly ask I just yeah hi thank you very much I just had a really quick question I was just thinking on your final verification is that being set up as a non-fungible token or does that just does that give you access to the supply chain verification points that then resulted ultimately in that in that bag for example thank you ever hey mark do you mind just quickly introducing yourself and yeah my name is Mark Lerotti I'm working with the United Nations Volunteer Program right now and I've been involved for over a year now I think with the with the SIG thank you so there may be a more technical answer to your question but I'll answer from my perspective the what we've done is we've worked with a third-party lifecycle analysis auditing company in this case with SES Global and what they've done is they've gone into for each one of our products we've gone through a full LCA lifecycle analysis and so in the course of the data input that flows into the blockchain one of the things that we also flow into the blockchain is the the the lifecycle analysis associated with that product so I'm not sure how common it is to give consumers the lifecycle the LCA associated with the given product or or or at all but but we do it and we do it with every single product and the specific one for the specific product so what blockchain enables us to do is when you type in that number you can access that that very specific report and so I don't know if you saw on that screen or not but one of the things that is there is a hyperlink where you can see that CS carried out the analysis and then you can also pull up the actual report that they did on that specific product and so that that goes into the ledger and that's forever associated with with that product and so you know when we think about where does that go one of our hopes is that this obviously we can expand it to all the other things that we do but but we'd love to see this really grow in terms of a platform for other products as well you know imagine if you're shopping and each product that that you that you're looking at has a really easily accessible number and data set that you can pull up and and and get the LCA associated with it and so you can see all the environmental impact whatever matters to you you know we're focused on carbon right now but we also want to expand into things like water and power and and you know whether it's the how the community is impacted or there's so many things that that are exciting that in terms of our ability to start measuring them and and by virtue of measuring hopefully improving them so we'd love to see this this concept of putting blockchain uh numbering on on lots of things so this is kind of where we started with this idea of of putting this number on there but we really want to see that as a sort of a new standard and I think in today's world you know never before has it been more important to to find ways to kind of cut through the noise and blockchain provides that sort of beautiful you know clear clear call through that that says look this is data that can't be changed can't be moved it's indelibly associated and it gives consumers the ability to to really have that that information in a way that's that's so specific so we're hoping that that starts to you know go just beyond what we're doing and really impact and not just in community but but other other product spaces as well and I love uh you know how Mark's explained you know that there's a lot of claims out there you know there's other products you know we call it kind of greenwashing but this is really authentic and hopefully giving consumers confidence so for the mark that just asked the question hopefully we've helped address some of your questions you know um just one question that I want to uh that that's in the chat but also mark you've mark herma you've talked about um is other thoughts and plans that you've got for you know for blockchain in the future other things that you have in the works if you're willing to share um from a consumer engagement perspective yeah I don't want to give too much yet but we've got exciting things that we're working on and and one of them is is thinking about end of life so we encourage people that if you know we we intend for these to be generational products so you know I'm hoping that I never part ways with my with my wallet here but if people do want to part ways we we encourage them to send their product back to us so we can reprocess it and turn it into something else and imagine if if that happened for a lot of products and you could you could start to see that the chain's associated with that so we're thinking about giving people the optionality to be on the blockchain so they're forever associated with the product um obviously there's privacy issues with that and so we have to work through that but but our point is to is to just try to show that you know there is there is no way um and it's it's great to the more we can visualize that and make that tangible I think it we it changes our our behaviors and patterns a little bit and we're also working on ways to help that inspire more connectivity to see how we impact each other with our with our decisions so it really it's just about bringing more and more information to people where these where things came from where they're going how they impact others and again we think blockchain is a great platform to do that Ron or Mark do you want to talk about like kind of like the YIVM from a blockchain perspective and you talked a little bit about it Ron but yeah yeah the so I'll commit on that one Debbie yeah the so I've had a close relationship with IBM for for decades now and there's lots of trust I see IBM as a great company innovative company driving forward and the way it picks up new ideas sometimes and takes leadership and market and drive those forwards is really important so when I saw you know this this particular opportunity of using hyperledger to to tackle not not the financial bits which is where people don't we tend to think of blockchain as being a financial tool you know to to generate cryptocurrency um what what we really use it for here is not it's it's it's used it for social use it's to to demonstrate trust and transparency to people that that you know so much fake news that goes around their days you know what can you believe what can't you believe and the cognition foundry we we look at using blockchain to to tackle some of those issues that people have can I believe what I'm being told so in Mark's case you know who would believe that you can make a pair of sunglasses out of the thin air you know who would believe that it's it's it's really difficult so use the technologies uh to to show people that this thing is real yes it's authenticated it's it's authenticated by by by by uh people you can trust and so looking at that you thought right hyperledger is the way to go IBM adopts in the technology but another key thing I've mentioned before is it's no use trying to change things if you're going to ruin them on the other side so I mentioned the example of bitcoin the way it uses energy you know to generate a single coin we didn't want to go down that line with that kind of technology so we use technologies that are very efficient very simple you know and that means you can design things that don't put a strain on on on the planet so the IBM technologies are ideal for this and that that was a key reason that we that we chose the IBM technologies but it's also the case and it's using it's using the stories of the technology so people like Mark you know it's it's a it's a tremendous story for IBM to use to to sell its technologies and to position its technologies as doing things for the world you know not just generating banking transactions or airline transactions or helping helping newspapers run it's you know how can modern-day technologies be used to change the world and I saw you know a desire with an IBM to do that and that's that's one of the key reasons why I partner IBM in this space I think for us one of the biggest things is about scalability you know we we didn't set out to kind of create an acute science project you know we set out to to hopefully create as big of an impact as as as possible and for us that entails scalability and so with this platform we needed something that could really grow with us we're looking to grow you know hopefully pretty hopefully pretty rapidly over the next few years here and and so we had to come up with something that that would enable that and IBM and Cognition were able to put together what we think is a is a good a good platform that should should enable that in a unique way so that was really valuable and and I think we'll see the fruits of that more and more in the in the years ahead here. Hey Debbie I just had a quick question for Mark and Ron. First and foremost Mark one thing that stood out is when you were talking about the vision that you had for equivalent you know given that it's the strongest bond and being able to share that good and I think that's something that really resonates with the work that you guys have done on the other end also Ron what you were talking about as blockchain not just being a financial transaction you know tracking solution but actually also being a single source of truth right especially when you're looking at sharing that information across your organizations I think those are a couple things that really stood out and I think even more so right most of the the hyper ledger community can attest to the the great work that IBM has done in the blockchain space. I noticed in the articles that you guys talked about air carbon and I was just one thing that I was kind of curious about is that something that's a much more advanced form of molten salt or is that something else where am I completely wrong with what I've understood. So air carbon is the the core of the business. Air carbon is the material that we make so in part we call it air carbon because by weight it's about 40% oxygen from air and then the remaining weight is carbon and hydrogen from greenhouse gas. So air carbon is the multiple material that we make from either methane or CO2 and it's the material that we talk about that essentially flows in almost all known living things and that really is the key sort of I guess ingredient as it were that flows through all of our products as well. Thank you so much Mark. So there's a question in the chat it says Mark and Ron are you working with any other companies to move product data across different platforms for example if air carbon products are sold through a retail outlet that also has a traceability platform which tracks some of the same data. I think it's a great question and what it brings up is okay what's next once you get the the platform in place all of a sudden you start to have a hundred other ideas in terms of how you can use it and this is a good a really good example that you know what if you could share it with you know retailers and outlets and what you know how can you get now that you have this sort of tool and it's it's it's you know tangible and and in some level tradable and shareable all of a sudden you can start to build so we first need to get the platform in place that was a that was a you know it was a lift we had to get all of our operations fully integrated and on the platform data flowing you know there's put it into your supply chain every single one of these products we have to individually either UV print or laser etch these these numbers onto our products so there is an important operational lift to get there now that we've got that it's like well how do you use that tool and so this is a great question so we don't currently work with our you know a retail outlet in part because right now everything's online so we don't have retail out yet but once we start to have those things then then I think that's a really good idea and I and I think it's just the beginning we're going to see some really cool stuff that that comes out of it I also realized to the last question I don't know that I did a great job answering it so so air carbon on its most fundamental level is this it's a energy storage material and it's kind of like like a fat or muscle that almost all organisms make it in response to a resistance a stress condition of some sort so if we if we if we take microorganisms and you create conditions where it's harder for them to grow in response they fill their cells with air carbon and we extract that and it just so happens when we extract it we can melt it and because it's meltable we can use it to replace all these different parts and pieces whether it's from plastic or leather or other things and so that's really kind of our core ingredient and and that's why we say it's sort of air carbon within because that's our our core ingredient that runs through everything and there's another question in the chat as well so carbon emission certifications do need to comply with the regulatory requirements at times do you plan to cover or extend the use of technology there and what challenges do you face there and so I know you've got the third party already the two third party companies that you're doing but yeah we've had air carbon independently certified by both scs global as well as carbon trust and when third parties do their lifecycle analyses they all have to comply with international regulations so that their audit is is you know meets meets whatever ISO standard or whatever there is so so we already do that in terms of meeting regulatory requirements and I think as the world evolves those will continue to get tighter and tighter and tighter but they're already pretty pretty darn good in terms of you know having global standards associated with them so the questions I see in the chat so we're getting close to the top of the hour first and foremost I want to thank you all so much for taking the time to be here this morning really appreciate learning about all the great social good projects that are coming out from IBM and Debbie would love to keep in touch if you have other projects that you would also like to highlight and as well I think for Mark and Ron would love to kind of keep keep in touch with you guys to see kind of where you guys go with this because you know I think this is really some transformative technologies and use cases that you guys are applying would love to like understand you know the the direction and be able to highlight that on the on this problem as well thanks for that and thanks for having us and we're really excited about what's to come I think one of the the things we definitely touched on today was that this is just the beginning in so many ways so we can't wait to you know keep working with you guys and and talk about all the different things that we can do awesome new light clearly has set the you know the bar very high for vision and for the art of the possible with this groundbreaking solution that you've heard so I just want to acknowledge you know Mark and his vision and his team but also Cognition Foundry as well as a key example of how an IBM ecosystem business partner can enable the vision of their clients by leveraging IBM Blockchain and IBM Linux 1 for the greater good so I just want to thank the gentleman for being here and for all of you for enabling us the time to tell this great story and we are excited about you know how things will continue to evolve in this space thank you so much it was great presentation thank you thank you for being here thank you have a good one