In Italy organized crime spreads sadly like wildfire in many commercial sectors, this is unfortunately now known and we are bitterly used to hearing it. Even here the blockchain could help, such as in the field of waste, where transparency and legality are needed, two things that sometimes are scarce thanks to crime, around the garbage there is a lot of money and so it is ‘time to renew the environment that surrounds it.
In this regard, a company specializing in security and compliance in redevelopment and real estate development is trying to exploit its potential to create a legality perspective for construction sites, with a low-cost solution. At the same time a startup operating in the circular economy with a marketplace platform for waste materials, has started a project to certify the provenance and the long chain of material passages.
Europe demands the traceability of waste by all its nations, which is required because of the sacrosanct environmental concerns in this regard. In Italy, the current system is showing its limits, we have reached such a point that the Ministry of the Environment has leaked to want to overturn it thanks to the use of an architecture guaranteed by innovative technologies.
Meanwhile, some projects are turning out to be realities, such as in Sesto San Giovanni (Milan), where the rehabilitation of some areas is active, in which the integrated system of safety and risk management of the yards has been extended, exploiting the potential offered by the blockchain. The route and the content of each truck, monitored through some geo-positioning systems, are entered in a database, as required by the Fir (waste identification form). Once every 15 days this file is extracted and the hash is calculated, the cryptographic fingerprint determined with the Sha-256 protocol that generates a 256 bit string. Chainstamp Llc will then take care of inserting the hash inside a block of the Bitcoin blockchain, as stated by the same company:
With this initiative we have created a system of absolute transparency, defining a procedure that makes the register of the movements of the trucks of the construction site unalterable and counterfeit proof for decades.
The blockchian that Sfridoo has just put is more focused on the “notarization” of the supply chain, often very long, they are developing it for the waste materials of its market of “secondary raw materials”. Here is a statement about Andrea Cavagna, co-founder with Marco Battaglia and Mario Lazzaroni, of this very active startup in the circular economy:
As part of our activity, we have seen a growing demand from companies to develop traceability through blockchain: each single player in the supply chain inserts his information building a system of unchanging certification of the provenance of the materials.
The Sfridoo project is currently still developing an infrastructure based on the Ethereum blockchain, which at the end of December will leave room for the last phase, by June 2019 it should be operational and will be provided as an additional service to the 160 active companies on their platform.
The hope is that speculation and abuse in this sector once and for all, technology could seriously help to suppress organized crime, given that this will really be a big business to achieve, I hope that this happens at least in part.
