Founded in 2018, Empower is a Norwegian circular platform company that uses digitization, cloud-data and blockchain technology to store and facilitate seamless sharing of information about plastic waste and map waste flows. Empower is among the top 5 blockchain startups for the circular economy.
To tell us more about Empower and how they are driving sustainability we have Wilhelm Myrer who is the CEO and Founder of Empower.
What problem is Empower trying to solve?
Lack of high volumes of high-quality recycled plastic with immutable tracking data, showing its journey, sourced through transparent and ethical supply chains. 70% of entire plastic waste (worth $280 billion) currently ends up in nature, landfills, or is incinerated. Lack of digital tools for transparency and traceability for producers to comply with increasingly demanding Extended Producer Responsibility obligations.
How are you addressing this problem?
Facilitate the shift from linear to circular systems, by incentivizing take-back systems, collection, segregation at source and tracking of products and materials streams Crowdsourcing collection of materials and providing feedstock of certain material types through a decentralized network of collectors
How do you differentiate yourself?
Our platform caters to the entire plastic value chain, across the various silos to seamlessly connect all the stakeholders with a layer of immutable data. The entire Platform is built in a flexible way that’s easy to deploy and customize for incoming customers. Everyone is incentivized in various ways to provide the much-needed data about the journey of the materials flows. Suppliers of recycled materials can get them verified through our Platform and issue proof of origin certificates, making the materials more valuable with tracking data. They also get an alternative funding source for their collection activities via our Plastic Credits scheme. Manufacturers and buyers of plastic can be matched with the right suppliers of the types and quality of plastic that they need for their production while obtaining product passports for their products for storytelling and compliance purposes.
How does your partnership with SAP help in driving sustainability?
We’re in the business of digitization and tracking waste streams as a means to an end to facilitate the circular economy. Integration with SAP allows the tracking on our platform as easy as possible and should be a win-win-win situation for everyone involved.
For further information on sustainability, you can refer to the Sustainability topic page. If you have any questions, you can post them in the community.
Call to action: To learn more about the startups and how they are partnering with SAP to drive sustainability, join us at our SAP.iO Sustainability in Energy and Natural Resources Demo Day on January 27 – Register here 🎉
Check out the rest of our series
Sustainability Blog series here.
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