MERICULUM

MERICULUM is a plastic trading platform, which brings the circular economy and Blockchain technology together to solve the problem of plastic waste.

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MERICULUM AS PLASTIC MARKETPLACE

Inspiration

We got inspire from the fact that there are 91% of plastic that not recycled and 22% of plastic not managed well in the world. According to Worldbank, data platform is important for the transition between the linear economy to circular economy. The plastic waste problem is staggering in size - it's equivalent to 14 million elephants and amounts to 400 million tons worldwide every year, with 68 million tons of that generated annually in Vietnam alone. Shockingly, only 75% of this waste is properly managed. The majority of this waste, around 79%, has ended up in landfills, dumps, and the natural environment as only 9% has been recycled and 12% has been incinerated. This has resulted in grave environmental issues such as marine pollution, wildlife mortality, and contamination of soil and water sources by microplastics.

What it does

MERICULUM is a green business frontier or a platform, which brings the circular economy and Blockchain technology together to solve the problem of plastic waste. MERICULUM is built and planned to support the smooth plastic recycling process in developing countries. By data platform, we accelerate the data, initiatives, and awareness; by marketplace, we integrate investors to help green projects reducing plastic usage, CO2 consumption, and capital raise for community building; by mobile app, we evaluate the program and initiate education to local citizens. The vision of a plastic data platform is to drive a global transition towards a circular economy for plastic, where resources are conserved, and plastic waste is minimised. The platform aims to minimise plastic waste, create a closed-loop system, reduce the environmental impact of plastic, and drive innovation in the plastic waste ecosystem. MERICULUM will provide two main products:

Marketplace:

There will be two marketplaces:

  1. NFATA as NFT marketplace that will allow the users to mint their own NFT, and present their project. NFATA is only limited for plastic topics such as collection, education, and gaming.
  2. MEERCAT as traditional market, which
    • Connects verified plastic collectors to verified recyclers
    • Facilitates secured payment for collected plastics/transparency by Blockchain
    • Facilitates community donations to support plastic waste reduction and education

Live Dashboard

  • Provides real-time plastic data which enables plastic producers and others to monitor the movement of plastic throughout the supply chain
  • Calculates and monitors the carbon footprint of plastic usage
  • Offers additional capabilities to plastic producers, including the ability to engage in the lifecycle of their plastics by purchasing plastic credits and launching campaigns

How we built it

We start with an online marketplace to connect between the plastic recycler and plastic collector, then a live dashboard.

Marketplace:

  1. NFATA: is building on Celo, Polygon, or Binance Chain, as they are selected as sustainable ecosystem. We are working with tokenomics at the moment, to create the incentives of plastic collections for the users and investors.
  2. MEERCAT: is building as web app, with the users authentications for three main stakeholders: plastic collectors, plastic recyclers, and plastic producers.

Live Dashboard

The dashboard will be built with database from business, to support the plastic tracking. The dashboard can also be supported with a physical connection, and Blockchain integration to guarantee the transparency.

Challenges we ran into

We are facing those challenges:

  1. Technology: we are working on plastic traceability by using Blockchain, which is designed for Vietnam market. So that, we need a market-fit design for the country.
  2. Market Validation: we are conducting survey to understand about the market-product gaps between the ideas and the facts of the country.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Recognition: We have been mentored and advised by GIZ Incubation Program link as a part of top 12 start-ups, and in top 30 projects of the Thousand Face Accelerators Program.
  • MVP: We have completed non-functional prototype, then we are working on the functional MVP directly on the website.

What we learned

Through the incubation program and expert interviews, we have learned these perspectives from the market:

  1. Business perspectives: How to test and re-test business model to fit the market, and create strong value-proposition.
  2. Technical perspectives: How to bring Blockchain and other technologies to green solutions.
  3. Market perspectives: How do the investors adapt the business value? how do the users adapt the products?

What's next for MERICULUM

In the next stages, we are going with two main activities:

-Market survey to share the insights about plastic industries for our audience. You can conduct the survey through the link below: link

-Product development: we are working on the product lines: NFATA as NFT marketplace, and MEERCAT as traditional market

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