Verdn enables companies to bundle high-quality and trackable environmental impact with the products and services they sell. The impacts offered through the Verdn platform are carried out by selected partners. These partners are a collection of the world’s most effective charities, NGOs and organisations, and they do work across some of the most pressing issues of our time, including reforestation, coral reef restoration, and ocean plastic recovery.

Ocean-bound plastic cleanup

For ocean-bound plastic cleanup, Verdn’s partner is Empower AS, a Norwegian organisation inspired by its domestic bottle recycling scheme. Together, Verdn and Empower are trying to stem the tide of plastic leaking into the oceans, which is estimated at roughly 8 million tonnes per year. For more information about the issue of ocean plastic, see here

Main partner

How they work

Empower is creating a solution to the plastic waste problem by giving plastic a value. They are cleaning up the world while fighting poverty by providing a wage to those in need.

Empower operates by setting up collection points around the world together with local partners (NGOs or charities). Once set up, these partners issue financial rewards in exchange for plastic deposits. All plastic is digitally registered upon collection, allowing Empower to trace the recovered plastic back up the supply chain, and keeping tabs on how it ends up being reused.

The plastic is cleaned up by underprivileged locals in poor communities. The plastic collection is a huge opportunity for these waste pickers, as they are given a stable amount of money per kilo of plastic collected. Locals that choose to be waste pickers can multiply their daily income – which for them means food, security and opportunity.

How they work with Verdn

• Verdn collates ocean-plastic cleanup pledges through our API, and then pass this pledge total over to Empower on a monthly basis, along with the corresponding monetary contribution.
• Empower earmarks the funds and use them to incentivise ocean-bound plastic cleanup across it’s network of local partners. Over several weeks, Empower verifies cleanup operations around the world, and track the plastic deposits on the blockchain.
• They then submit reports and data streams, including photo galleries, back to Verdn. This data then gets parsed and distributed out as updates onto our tracking dashboards so that end-consumers can see where they’ve had an impact.

Content examples

Empower sends monthly certificates from each site where ocean-bound plastic was deposited:

As well as more comprehensive photo galleries, to contextualise the operations:

Countries Empower operates in