 Welcome to my talk. It's almost 10.50 here in Berlin and I'm very happy to see that you have attended to my talk using blockchain to reduce electronic waste or e-waste and make recycling commercially viable. My name is Nina Schmulius. I am the speaker today for the next 20 minutes and then we go quickly into a Q&A. Before I start, I just like to thank the Hyperledger community, the Linux Foundation and the sponsors Accenture and IBM for inviting me to speak here. I think the Hyperledger community is an incredible community. I've joined over the last weeks the Hyperledger special interest groups and they're amazing people and if you want to learn more about Hyperledger, I can really recommend to join those groups. So the next thing before I start is unfortunately my system faces some weird problems with platform hoping. So my camera might drop off in between the talk and I might be even quitted out of the talk because the hoping platform is a little bit too much for my system and I kindly ask you to stay in the talk. I will be back soon and I also apologize for this more or less unprofessional frame with the PDF. It's the best settlement I could do with the hoping platform not to overload the system. Yeah, so let's get started. To give you a quick impression, what we are talking about in the next 20 minutes is, of course, I'm very interested who is joining the talk and I want like to share about me and what is my background, why I'm here today. Then I want to talk to you why we need change, what is the problems or what are the problems linked to e-waste, what could be the solution or the solutions and let's talk blockchain of course. We're in a blockchain forum here and of course I want to give you an insight about the impact we could make. While I'm talking you see on the right side you see a bar with a possibility to chat. I would like to invite you to chat to make contact with each other. Please share your name, please share where your background a bit about what you're doing and of course if you like the town that you are in and I would like to see that later on and please just connect to each other because this is also a network community event and that's why we are here isn't it so. So let me give you a quick introduction about my background. I'm a writer, a lecturer in Switzerland and also the founder of 7479C, a startup that is connected to the problems of e-waste but today I'm speaking to you mostly as a citizen, as a citizen of this planet and I feel the urge to address my problems that I especially have with the topic of e-waste to you today to inspire you and yeah to bring some new hopefully new information about e-waste and things that are connected to it and I'm very happy to be part of your community today. Let's jump directly into the e-waste why we need change and why I'm talking about e-waste I now want you to imagine you stand in front of a massive cruise ship you may have seen them lying in harbour maybe you have traveled with with one in your lifetime so you know how impressive and how massive those ships are and it's just one but I now want you to imagine you stand in front of 350 cruise ships and now your mind is a little bit like this one isn't it so why I'm telling that 350 cruise ships is exactly the amount of e-waste reproduced in one year in 2019 accordingly to the global e-waste monitor a report from united nations it's a number isn't it so so and only or less than 20 percent of this amount was collected and professional recycled what is e-waste in general to give you a quick information about that e-waste is everything that is temperature exchange equipment such as fridges or air conditioners but it's also screen and monitors of course it's lamps large equipment for example large printers in company small equipment like calculators but also small it and yeah your laptop or your smartphone that's what what e-waste defines so I said before only 20 percent is recycled or even less than 20 percent so the question is what is happening to the other 80 percent isn't it so and sorry but we don't know entirely yet what we know so far is that there is a lot of movement of e-waste mostly from high income countries to low income countries I just gave you here an example you just can see the example of the US so the US ships a lot of e-waste outside to countries like India Brazil to Nigeria to Ghana yeah this is what we somehow know it's not totally totally clear but that is what we somehow know about the movement of e-waste so what is the problem or what causes such a movement is environmental or waste colonialism what we mean by environmental or waste colonialism this is scientific definition is all movement from high income to low income countries and I gave you the example of the US but of course US is not the only country who does it right so it's all here in Germany we do nearly the same but it also I mean waste colonism is also the the kind of that you know about that waste is shipped out like I like you see here in the quote Malaysia sent 4 000 tons of plastic trash back to rich countries but it's also not only about the trash that is going around it's also about that indigenous people are suffering from the moment that we need raw materials a lot and they suffer from displacement so it's sad to say but I'm also a smartphone user so I also have two laptops here in front of me to to get this presentation ongoing but it's said to say buying a new smartphone or laptop accelerates environmental or waste colonialism until now the second problem linked to e-waste is climate change smartphones and laptops contain a lot of precious metals such as gold and silver right and mining those raw materials accelerates global warming raw materials are also becoming scarce and 80 to 90 percent of our raw materials are coming only from China since pandemic started this has led to many problems like delays in supply chain or even delivery um yeah late deliveries of electronic devices unfortunately we're still doing this raw material mining so you can say okay our smartphones our laptops accelerate climate change a very short version but it is that way but it's not only that we have this massive problems like environmental or waste colonialism or climate change that we face as citizens of our planet also businesses change a lot of shifts and new needs since the past years one of course it's also climate change businesses always say yeah why should I care for climate change I mean I don't have a problem here right but that's not true so um as you see I brought you some quotes from Forbes and CNN business and climate change is really cost intensive for businesses so if businesses would realize say okay we do something against climate change it would be less expensive for them also businesses nowadays face a lot of requirements in the environmental social and governance sector such as fair labor conditions let me give you one example the best is the food industry or the fashion industry more than 80 of consumers pay attention if a product is sustainable that's one of my favorite topics the plant obsolescence you see here this beautiful light bulb which is the oldest light bulb on planet it still hangs in a fire station somewhere in us and it's still you can still watch it burning so you can see the live videos there so you know 100 years ago the companies decided to go for plant obsolescence and of course this is also a major threat or a major problem of e-waste right because it accelerates already e-waste another topic I found out during my research for the past two years about e-waste is that consumer do not know about the value of their waste so this is pretty I just point to myself because I have three old laptops at home and also three old smartphones right so it's it's not about you only it's also about absolutely me so what is the the the facts behind I found out during my research of course there are already solutions such as fairphone or google came up with the google era project right which could be easily to switch components once they are broken but um due to my experience of 20 years in marketing and corporate communications I know that people buy lifestyles right I'm the best example I love apple and I have everything of apple right so I never switch sorry to another system right that's it people buy lifestyles they buy systems not solutions unfortunately another thing that is a threat or a problem linked to e-waste is the hibernation so as I said before I have four old laptops at home and so I'm calling a problem because I'm building a barrier to circular stock let me sum it up unfortunately until nowadays yet consuming devices grabs more attention than the e-waste it costs or the way it is manufactured right but I'm sure this will change soon and why I'm so sure two weeks ago I attended in Paris or virtually in Paris to the change now gathering the the largest world gathering for impact on planet and I always heard in every talk that people want to live in alignment with their values and companies providing that will thrive so that brings us to a beautiful solution let us turn problems into solutions people let us rebalance us the time is now and one solution could be that you include knowing and caring for e-waste and the manufacturing process into ethical consumerism right so normally or until now we are just starting from source to product and look on this part of the supply chain but we should look more we should look behind the product we should look what causes the waste or which waste is cost and also we should look more close to the manufacturing process when we talk about ethical consumerism what could be a solution for hibernation once I would be rewarded for bringing my four or six or eight devices back to the recycling yard it would be brilliant right because I would run to get the reward so that could be also a possibility to to stop this barrier to circular stock and the third topic linked to e-waste could be empowerment of urban mining instead of linear practices we could start thinking circular and make recycling commercially viable through that process and what do I mean when I talk about urban mining it is the city or to look at the city as a raw material deposit so the raw materials are next to the my neighbor's door yeah so it also is based on the three principles reuse recycle and recover and it helps to or it helps us to avoid transport rules why is it so necessary I just sum it up accordingly to the report by the united nations the value of raw materials in the global e-waste generated in 2019 is equal to approximately 57 billion US dollars think of that still we haven't solved one problem the role of businesses what could businesses help us to do all those solution thriving and my answer of course is let's talk blockchain right maybe you're familiar with using blockchain on supply chain and businesses could enable consumers to trace their raw materials through recycling processes they could easily use blockchain to meet requirements in the esg sector by building transparent sustainable supply chains and they could also prove that their devices are made out of materials from urban mining just to give you some inspiration about the possibilities blockchain could be used as a lecture here for the reward system or also to trace each component you know nowadays it's possible to build a digital twin on blockchain so you could easily trace each component of a laptop for example or a smartphone because sometimes only the plastic from a laptop is recycled but not the entire device itself it could help us to understand where the 80 percent of e-waste is going right and it could help us to bring recycling forward and to change the system to think more circular and of course to slow down climate change and reduce or minimize environmental and waste colonialism how could it work just a small graphic I don't want to take it too far because it's a as I said I don't want to put my startup in the center of this talk I just want to talk to you and give you some inspiration about it you can easily trace devices from the beginning of the manufacturing process even nowadays from the sources of raw material mining isn't it so and you can trace it along the entire value chain until reselling processes and even when they are resold two times three times you can easily just keep the data right until the device is entirely 100 percent recycled so two minutes to go before we start to the Q&A so I give you a little insight of the impact we could make blockchain has already become a driving force for open supply chains and for transparent supply chains right so imagine blockchain would become a driving force in open reverse supply chains so that you have a completely transparent value chain for e-waste that would be absolutely brilliant right according to the problems I mentioned what would we achieve we would know where the lost 80 percent of 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste would be we would make sure that the waste is recycled we would thrive urban mining and power citizenship reduce climate change or at least slow it down we would be also rebalance inequalities and stop environmental colonialism and these are just goals I never made up myself these are goals linked to the sustainable development goals of united nations of course and I think this model could be a benefit for citizens because we are all citizens even if you work at IBM you're still a citizen of this planet and it could help us to really achieve those goals so I'd like to thank you for your attention wherever you are please stay safe and I open the Q&A now thank you Matthew that's incredible yes I invite you to contact me directly if you like so and yeah I'm happy to if you want to help me that's great thanks Peter for sharing thanks Dorothy yes for the reminder and yes are there any questions you have you can if you like if you like you can type it in the chat I normally go with questions like okay do we need do we need I at the Q&A excuse me sorry yes Matthew oh no we started with Takuma thanks for the question Takuma are are there any groups already discussing e-waste I just can answer it from the perspective of German right so we have a lot of groups here in Germany discussing e-waste one is the a group that is absolutely for Berlin and also I can recommend you to to look at the donut groups formed by the donut theory of Kate Ravers who is also interested in seeing the holistic picture of waste and economy so Matthew does the technology exist to be able to recover these raw materials from e-waste yes yes and thank you for the questions of course yeah it is and one major one major player in this game is mint innovation in Auckland they found a system to use I think it's bacteria to to recover precious metals from waste and they did it in a way which is commercially viable because this is the pain point about recycling right to do things in a matter that the costs are not expanding right so the the name is mint innovation Peter are there currently recycling systems that can be updated with blockchain um for that I think that the model I propose here is very new and I haven't seen that yet but well you know it's just um it might be so um I can have a look and can get to get back to you just send me an email if you like so we can discuss that or I just do a deeper research on it so there is a notion that blockchain and its need for several nodes itself contributes to excessive use yeah mm-hmm yeah how do you see yeah how do I see that right thanks for the question Patrick that's uh incredible yes I'm I'm um thinking about that a lot to be honest and if you're a bit familiar with blockchain then you know that um mining bitcoin is in the centre of this discussion right so that's one aspect of it but the other aspect you are totally right I think there are several blockchains using several kind of energy amounts this is one fact and the other is I think blockchain is still in its beginning and I think we need to to look at it it's a very young technology from my perspective to be honest so so I'm uh yeah I'm looking of course to um that there will something come up with a less uh use of energy thanks for the question but it's really really absolutely necessary to discuss that so for example for my startup I'm doing a life cycle assessment to look um if this is also um causing more damage or if this is really a solution that can help us to reduce the energy problem thanks yeah Ernest thank you so much how do I incentivize all the stakeholders in the value chain to ensure you have a complete traceability record in the blockchain right so yeah that's that's another topic um I'm thinking about a lot but there are already people who have solved that problem and um once one is the startup provenance in based in London I guess and they work closely together with NGOs and there's another startup which is working also on transparent supply chains here in Germany by initiated by Boston consulting group and they work for example together with worldwide life found and I think this is a valuable situation when you just shape a model that also includes non-governmental organizations and that's what I'm aiming to do at 74.79c so thanks a lot for your questions if there's any question left here please go ahead and reach out later if you want to I will also be uh attending to other sessions at Hyperledger Global Forum and um yeah I can just tell you these guys and girls you have to say um an incredible community I know from the special interest group that they're already also working on this energy problem and a lot of stuff and yes I'm very happy if you just go and join our special interest groups uh Peter thanks 74.79c is building a platform and app to inform people consumers and businesses about raw materials and to enable them to trace them through the entire recycling process and also we are empowering recycling by donating a percentage of our revenue to build professional recycling facilities wherever it is needed and we're a startup and yeah we are here in Berlin so whenever you want to reach out I'm very happy thank you Peter that's cool thanks a lot thanks a lot to all of you thanks for your time thank you so much for being here thank you Clementina thanks a lot thanks Eric thanks and have a good time have a good global forum 2021 have fun