POLYPROBLEM report: The Circularity Code

57 See interviews with Peter Nitschke, Plastic Bank, and Joel Tasche, CleanHub 58 See Plastic Bank (n. d.) 59 Circular Action (n. d.) (2) pickers, recyclers, and aggregators and the benefits that digitalized processes can bring to their business.56 Supply chain management platforms that centralize data provide manufacturers, distributors, and recyclers with important analytical tools to better understand the composition of their material flows, trends in specific materials over time, and the state of their inventory. This is particularly useful for revenue planning and specific material demands, particularly in cases when there is a direct link to buyers or the global recyclate market, providing direct insight into price developments.57 The ability to view and compare sales prices or premiums for their collected waste volumes makes the use of apps extremely attractive for waste collectors and the plastic waste trade in general. Having access to up-todate information on where waste is located, being able to get direct orders for a waste pick-up service, or seeing their nearest customers also enables waste pickers to make their work more efficient and effective. Ideally, this will improve their chances of earning a regular income and even getting fair pay, as well as health and education services,58 especially where digital solutions are linked to corresponding programs or aim to gradually integrate the so-called “informal sector.” However, this requires approaches that enable payment according to performance and not just according to the quantity collected, for example based on surcharges for the time actually spent collecting waste. Too much of a good thing? “The benefits of digital solutions may seem obvious at first glance and may help to create better living and working conditions for people in emerging and developing countries. Digital solutions can also improve the prerequisites of a circular economy, for example by making material flows traceable and creating transparency for compliance with reporting obligations and achieving recycling targets. In day-to-day business practice, digital apps can connect waste producers with waste collectors, for example, with the latter receiving incentives to collect low-value materials. But not all informal waste pickers have access to digital apps. That means that the multiverse of digital offerings does not serve everyone. We must be careful to ensure that no one is excluded from the new systems,” say Ellen Gunsilius, specialist planner for the environment and circular economy at GIZ, and her colleague Steffen Blume, project manager for reducing the entry of plastic waste into the world’s oceans. They are involved in waste and circular economy projects in various countries and are part of the PREVENT Waste Alliance Plastics working group, in which many digital and circular companies also participate. The group has already counted over 20 national and international waste collection apps on the Indonesian market alone. Gunsilius and Blume deduce from this a need for harmonization and interoperability, as otherwise further progress would be slowed and resources would be invested in reinventing the wheel time and again. In addition to a certain technical openness at the programming level of the apps59, this requires above all the willingness of market participants to cooperate for an overarching purpose. “If standards for digital solutions and data use are created, updated, and made accessible to governments and market participants, the added value would perhaps be recognized and they could contribute to improved environmental and living conditions through efficiency and economies of scale,” Gunsilius and Blume cautiously predict. 41

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