With the Circular Economy being a key strategic investment for most businesses in recent years, it becomes paramount to have a platform where each stakeholder involved in circular value chains can share and use material information, while maintaining privacy over sensitive data. In order to address this issue in the Japanese and Asian markets Circularise, a blockchain technology scale-up that helps making plastics supply chains more transparent and sustainable, partnered with Marubeni Corporation (“Marubeni”), a Diversified Trading Conglomerate.
Over the last years, operators from the chemicals and plastics supply chain have given more attention to sourcing their raw materials from systems that are sustainable. Validating sustainability claims, however, has proven to be a problem due to a lack of an efficient and trustworthy data sharing infrastructure.
“Circularise’s digital technology has the potential to provide visibility and enable improved decision making when it comes to sustainable raw material sourcing,” says Terumasa Watanabe, Senior Operating Officer, the Head of Plastics Business at Marubeni.
Since 2016, Circularise has been developing a platform that allows to create a tamper-proof trail of audit for raw materials and selectively publish data while maintaining confidentiality. Its proprietary Smart Questioning technology enables brands, OEMs and manufacturers to share traceability-related information like proof of origin. It also enables the disclosure of environmental indicators such as carbon footprints, as well as information on the company’s compliance with Sustainable Development Goals and third-party certifications towards customers and regulators, while preserving privacy over sensitive information. In September 2020, Circularise secured €1.5M in grant funding from the European Commission, and was recognized as a provider of solutions to promote Circular Economy.
“By working together Marubeni and Circularise will contribute to the realization of a sustainable society and over the years put all supply chain actors in the position to implement circular economy practices at scale,” says Jordi de Vos, Circularise Founder.
Together with Marubeni, Circularise will conduct demonstration projects with Marubeni’s domestic clients and after these projects both organisations will investigate the benefits of a joint venture in Japan to commercialise the Circularise service.