“The most damaging phrase in the language is
‘it’s always been done that way'”
Grace Hopper

The other day I was chatting to friends, one teased the other that the Amazon delivery driver had called at their house to check they were ok because they hadn’t ordered anything online that week. Overhearing the joke made me realise that we really have pivoted from a world of busy offices, shops and streets to a world that is decentralised and digital. 

This theme of democratisation and decentralisation applies to retail, work and recycling, just as much as it does to banking, commerce, and government. During the lockdown we have had to transition to ‘at-home’ living; work-from-home, order-from-home, entertain-at-home, deliver-to-home and so on. 

I see the statistics almost every day, retail sales are down whilst online orders have gone through the roof, with research showing that 91% of e-commerce CMOs believe their brand’s revenue will grow in the next 12 months.

What we have seen is a true digital revolution of society in just over a year, moving from physical to digital in the blink of an eye! Digital is reconstructing our society from physical to digital and turbo-charging the whole experience of consumer engagement.  

The fact is that you can do nearly everything on a smartphone today. In my last blog I gave the example of banking and how it moved from Branch to ATM to Smartphone. The same can also be said of retail, travel and even medical.

In the world of recycling, Cryptocycle has been leading the way in Digital Deposit Schemes and was recently referred to by The Grocer magazine as the pioneer of Digital DRS (Deposit Return Schemes) something of which we are rightly proud of. Back in 2018 when we first floated the idea and concept of digital tracking waste and using a blockchain the response was that the traditional way is the best and ‘it’s always been done this way’.  Four years on and the term Digital DRS is now fully planted in the lexicon, we now even have a cross platform industry working group that includes the likes of Alupro, Biffa, British Glass, British Plastics Federation, British Retail Consortium, Danone Waters, Diageo, Ocado, and RECOUP to name a few, all exploring the use of digital for a UK DRS in order to reduce costs and carbon footprint and increase consumer engagement. 

“The most damaging phrase in the language is ‘it’s always been done that way'” –  Grace Hopper

Nothing can stifle innovation or opportunity any faster than a culture that discourages looking for new ways of doing things.

One of my absolute hero’s is Grace Hopper or to give her full title Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. Grace was not only one of the pioneers in the development of the electronic computer, she is (probably) the only mathematician to have a warship named after her – one that I was lucky enough to attend a reception on and had the pleasure of briefly meeting her.

Rear Admiral Hopper was famous for many things in the I.T World. She was a brilliant mathematician and computer scientist and also a gifted teacher, communicator and optimist. A true visionary. Hopper celebrated the potential of computers. “I think we consistently underestimate what we can do with computers if we really try,” she once said. In an interview on “60 Minutes,” host Morely Safer asked if the computer revolution was over. Hopper replied, “No, we’re only at the beginning…We’ve got the Model-T.”

Until the end of her life, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper looked forward with confidence to new technologies and their problem-solving capabilities. 

Digital DRS – time to change the narrative

With new concepts and change comes resistance and misinformation – at a recent industry webinar on Deposit Return Schemes we heard one of the speakers say that Digital DRS would increase carbon footprint, required more infrastructure, was expensive and not inclusive. Nothing could be further than the truth – Digital DRS delivers the exact opposite of this.

However, we recognise that for some, new ways of doing things can come too soon and too fast – it’s often easier to stay within the comfort of the known than look outside current ways of working and explore new innovations.

We recognise these challenges and work to share our knowledge and learn from others so that we can fully understand the resistance to bring a collaborative approach for further exploration and success. 

Reward4Waste – pioneers in Digital DRS

The aim of Reward4Waste is to significantly increase recycling and facilitate long-term behavioural change. Whether it be drinks containers or food packaging, textiles or tyres, single use or re-use –  any uniquely coded item can be ‘captured’.

At the front end, this intelligence is bought together in a simple to use consumer-facing app. When it comes to digital DRS, citizens download the app, scan the unique code on their drinks container/s, scan the deposit return point, and get rewarded for recycling.

At the back end, Reward4Waste brings innovative digital intelligence. The unique coding allows for items to be traced throughout their life-cycle, bringing rich data, transparency and accountability.

So much more than ‘just an app’

The Reward4Waste app is just the interface into a world covering A.I Artificial Intelligence with a Neural Network, an integration layer that allows for various formats, an interface layer that provides Interfaces for the likes of RVM’s, smart Bins, dumb bins and all flavours in-between, a reporting layer with various dashboards and reports all underpinned by a security module with strict adherence to GDPR.  Far from being “just an app” Reward4Waste is a full eco system for managing the return of deposits, provenance, and waste management.

What’s next?

It’s an exciting time for CryptoCycle and with that sees our team grow, with Board Advisors joining us from Said Business School, University of Oxford and GS1, and the business expanding into Australia… 

No more opaque provenance. No more confused recyclers. No more contaminated collections. No more fuzzy numbers.

We believe in a new way of doing things to reduce waste – a more transparent way, that helps bring confidence and clarity to the recycling process and engages consumers in circularity and sustainability.

Thank you for reading,

Tony

www.reward4waste.com

The only constant in life is change

In my 40 years in IT, I have seen many technologies come and go but the one thing that remained constant is change. I read that it was the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who coined the phrase “the only constant in life is change” in around 500 B.C. No matter how cliché this saying may seem, I’ve realised throughout my career, this is reality!

Being in technology, I have witnessed change move at a record pace. Looking back at when I was a young boy, I was obviously destined to go into IT at an early age. Unbeknownst to me, my walk to my local swimming pool took me past a set of single story buildings that turned out to be the first home of GCHQ and apparently housed two Colossus computers! 

When I finally began working I was taught to program by a lovely lady called Anne who had previously been at Lyons in Greenford, the home of the LEO (Lyons electronic office I) the world’s first commercial computer! IT was therefore written in my destiny.

Throughout my career I have worked on Mainframes, Minicomputers, Distributed Systems, been around for the birth of the Email, the Internet, the Cloud and in the last decade, the rise of everything from Mobile to Blockchain to AI. I have seen entire industries emerge and watched traditional businesses re-imagine themselves and the ones that didn’t,  withered and died.

I am constantly being told “the old ways are better” but life experience tells me that this is not so. I often use the example of banking, an industry that is not known as ‘bleeding edge’. Back in the 1970’s banks closed at 3pm on a Friday afternoon until 9am on Monday, so if you had not taken any money out you were in for a quiet weekend. If I had been told in 1970 that in 2021 I would have an electronic device that would tell me how much money is in my account, let me use my watch to pay for items as cash, and that I could make telephone and video calls with these devices I would have probably thought you were watching far too much Tomorrow’s World! For those born after 2003 Tomorrow’s World was the gadget show of its time, and there is a brilliant clip from 1979 that talks about ‘mobile phones’ which I urge you to watch!

Today, we are seeing more people than ever relying on connected tech to help them manage almost every aspect of daily life, with the last 12 months seeing remarkable growth when it comes to digital usage – research has highlighted that habits are unlikely to change in a post COVID world and that the last 12 months have brought about a decade’s worth of behavioural change, particularly in the world of digital.

As connectivity and computer processing power continue to advance, new opportunities are opening up in every corner of the economy. From automated supply chains to new digital payment methods to big data analysis, new technology is fundamentally changing the way we interact with the world and how we do business at every level.

One of the largest shifts occurring in manufacturing is the digitalisation of supply chains. Before, producers would manually keep track of materials and components moving in and out of their factory. Today, new software allows an automated system to keep track of and automatically manage orders, while simultaneously ensuring quality and efficiency by staying hooked into every stage of production.

This kind of syntonised system, that once would have only been seen in the most cutting-edge facilities, is fast becoming standard, and is likely to become a required part of some larger retailers’ quality assurance or sustainability standards driven by ecologically aware consumers who demand to know the provenance or product impact in order to make better purchasing decisions.

As these new supply chain models become commonplace, businesses will need to be able to replicate and meet these standards if they wish to remain competitive. Advanced digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain are transforming industries by offering a synchronised and secure record of transactions and are starting to play an important role in helping to bring transparency and accountability to supply chains, bringing about a true circular economy. 

In retail and hospitality, we have seen the recent launch of  ‘connected stores’ where inventory is automatically tracked via mobile apps or hooked up tills, security alerts are logged through RFID tags (Radio Frequency Identification) and unexpected sales peaks or lulls are flagged. Going even further, all of this data can then feed into predicative algorithms that, as they learn over time, can inform business decisions on future promotions, orders or even the best opening times.

We are now entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) and through digital transformations we have the potential to create new and exciting opportunities for businesses.

The advancement in technology includes a huge jump in cloud computing, the realisation of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the introduction of digital currencies and smart devices. The UK is in a prime position to capitalise and be a global leader in this charge.

CryptoCycle

For the last 3 years I have been wrapped up in the world of waste. A chance conversation gave the Eureka moment in which CryptoCycle was ‘born’.  Working in the waste industry has been an eye opener as it is an industry not easily open to embracing change unless forced upon it. 

In the world of waste our Digital Deposit Return Scheme (or Digital DRS), Reward4Waste, harnesses the power of Industry 4.0 to facilitate the return and reuse of containers using unique coding and smart technology.

We use green Blockchain and A.I. to prevent fraud, manage provenance, bring insights and model data.

The traditional way of running a Deposit Return System is to force consumers to take back their waste to central locations and process them through Reverse Vending Machines and whilst this has been around in Scandinavian countries for the last 30 years, it is now “so last century” and does not appear to us to be an eco friendly choice – with waste being driven cross country to counting centres as a way of reducing fraud. New intermediaries have emerged; home service and home delivery come to mind as good examples.

By harnessing technology, we have the ability to change the way people think about waste and incentivise consumers to do the right thing at home.

We live in a world so full of emerging technology that not a week goes past when I am not reading a paper with some new technology and thinking how I could apply this to our various projects.

Over the next few weeks, I will give you some insight behind Reward4Waste, our technology and vision for the future. 

Thank you for reading,

Tony

www.reward4waste.com

The consumer journey

Front end simplicity – back end intelligence. No more opaque provenance. No more confused citizens.

The journey may differ by project, but all share a common goal, to make it easy for people to return items for reuse or recycling. Reducing waste and keep valuable items in the circular economy for longer.