The crypto community is not oblivious to the world’s problematic plastic problem. Here are some projects, people, and tokens trying to make a difference. (Via CointelegraphZN)
“I was traveling and working as a scuba diver in Thailand, which I adored. I had a really close personal connection with the ocean. Other divers and backpackers like myself picked up a lot of litter from the beaches every day.
But it was only with the advent of social media that we realized how badly the planet was polluted,” he says “One day, I remember seeing someone with an iPhone on the beach, and they were using it to track their location, and this was my next ‘aha’ moment: Why not use this increasingly common mobile device to take photographs and document the litter?” Inspired by this revelation, Lynch returned to his native Cork to study for a master’s in GIS to fully understand how to use technology to solve the pollution problem. He also realized that the mere presentation of the problem, however huge, would not be a sufficient motivator — it had to be more immediate. Lynch evolved his thinking into a citizen science platform where data can be crowdsourced on a hyper-local basis: “People are being asked to make changes to help mitigate climate change, but I can’t pull a CO2 molecule from the air and show it to you. People hear about the environment as some far-away place being polluted, and although it’s true, this approach is disconnected from most people’s day-to-day reality. But if I can help people discover litter on a more local level, like when people zoomed into their home on Google Maps for the first time, I have your attention.” The timing in terms of the evolution of geography is also on Lynch’s side. He explains that the study of the planet has gone through several iterations and paradigm shifts. Up until the 1960s, the study of geography, and the practice of teaching it, is largely a descriptive process. Then, a computational revolution occurred where universities started getting access to computers and governments started putting satellites into space. “Suddenly we were able to take this quantitative information about the planet and store it on a computer. The geographers of the world realized they could not only describe how landforms looked but they could actually count things such as the amount of rainfall or how green the grass is. It’s referred to as the quantitative revolution in the study of geography.”This revolution, combined with approximately 4 billion people owning a powerful data collection instrument — their smartphone — gives birth to citizen science. It is no longer just a few experts counting and collecting geographical data but thousands of possible data aggregation points.In 2014, Lynch started following Bitcoin and particularly liked the concept of proof-of-work, where miners are rewarded for securing the network. When Ethereum launched a few years later, Lynch saw that he can create his own token, which gave him another “aha” moment. “I had been toying with the idea of using bracelets to reward people, but while an attractive idea, it wasn’t practical, so the idea of rewarding people with a token was infinitely more compelling.” And so, in 2015, Littercoin was born. In 2022, Lynch got his first funding from Project Catalyst from Cardano. “Mind you, Littercoin is not like other crypto. It won’t be listed on any exchange, and you won’t be able to buy it — it can only be earned by downloading the OpenLitterMap app and starting recording the litter.” Lynch argues that there is a low barrier to earning the token and notes that it will only be spendable at pre-approved stores, and these stores will be in the zero waste stores in the climate economy. “You earn the Littercoin by improving the environment, and you can spend it in stores that also improve the environment — it’s a virtuous circle.” Since launching the app in April 2017, there have been 6,500 users, with new people coming on board daily. This growing community has been responsible for 500,000 tags and more than 350,000 photographs. “And if you keep the map open, you can see the updates in real-time. So, if someone spots some litter and picks it up anywhere in the world, you can see it update on the map. We are creating a global community working to rid the planet of litter,” Lynch says. To make the process fun, Lynch has created a global #LitterWorldCup with the countries all competing to be the top. Ireland was No. 1, but the Dutch community has since overtaken them. Maybe litter collection begins at home after all.
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