Rezy

This is a quick demo about how people can recycle PET bottles from home using Rafiki and Open Payments and generate a new economy based on plastic waste.

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Inspiration

Rezy is a recycling program for plastic bottles (PET) that rewards a user when he/she recycles the bottle. Here in Ecuador people don't recycle because of lack of rewards , and people who wish to do it have to carry their bottles to a centralized point, it's very tricky , here at Rezy the idea is to reward people per each sent bottle on the application. It is also well known that people who makes recycling a life style and a way to get income risk their health. This is aimed at recognizing and dignifying the daily work of low-income individuals dedicated to recycling in Ecuador, providing them with better working conditions, and mitigating the health risks associated with the current model, which involves sifting through discarded items.

This is a prototype derived from my own project "Reciclachain" presentend in Guayaquil - Ecuador and this project got into the finals in "Enviromental Challenges of the Municipality of Guayaquil",https://twitter.com/davotrade2010/status/1573816612045692930/photo/1 and now I decided to power it up switching from idea to a prototype on the Interledger Stack.

What it does

In a nutshell this project basically allow users or recyclers to scan bottles' barcodes and create an order that after its verification will generate a payment from the Recycling Company to the user , using payment pointers. #Use case p2p rewarding

  1. Scan the Barcode: When someone wishes to recycle a bottle, they simply scan the bottle's barcode and create an array of items (bottles) that is stored in the backend.

  2. Track and Pickup: The collected bottles are sealed in a tracked bag with a QR code that represents recycler1 payment pointer/ We assume this bag is ready for pickup and it is delivered to Acme Recycling Company, and this will verify the contents of the bag.

  3. Verification : This action registers the bottle and rewards the individual based on the number of bottles they provide , once the bottles are verified at the Recycling Plant , if everything is Ok the Acme Recycling Company will pay 0.05 USD per each bottle to recycler 1 using it's payment pointer provided before.

  4. Get Paid: People involved in this process only need a payment pointer to receive payment from the recycling company. It's somewhat akin to web monetization but without constant micropayments streaming in; instead, payments are cleared on specific events, such as scanning a bottle provided by the recycler 1. In a later version an option to split revenue with social recyclers can be added as well.

How we built it

  1. This demo was built using react for the frontend , and NodeJS and Javascript. I spun up a Rafiki Alpha 3 release instance on a local linux machine .
  2. I changed both seed.yml files for each wallet provider in order to keep logic with the process and the 'actors' involved.
  3. Two front end were built, One for mocking up a Recycling company in this case Acme Recycling Company and the other one mocks a recycler, aka the user.

Challenges we ran into

  1. The major challenge was to read the Rafiki documentation in order my demo can perform the tasks I need it to do. So I spent some time on this and understanding the Rafiki APIs and. I tried to move this to a remote environment but I had some issues when I try to do it , specially with payment pointer and urls. And why not to point out that Google Cloud service bans my instances because of crypto mining warning , of course this is a false positive but it was not able to be fixed. Sad :(
  2. Another challenge was to find a way to pack the items (bottles) and I decided it will be a bag with a QR code representing the beneficiary payment pointer in this recycler 1. 3.It was hard to create a simplified use case for p2p payment at the beginning.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  1. I built a basic flow that proves Interledger Stack can be also applied to green tech
  2. I learned a lot about Interledger and Rafiki during this year.
  3. This is a green initiative using ILP and it aims to improve recycling in LATAM.

What we learned

  1. The main lesson learned here at my point of view is how Interledger works at a low level and how it could be used for building real time payments and new economies, in this case an PET plastic based one.
  2. Recycling is a good and practical way to help the planet and generate a payment network backed by ILP.

What's next for Rezy

  1. The next step is to get investment in order to build a better MVP and , develop a flutter wallet for easier interaction and deliver this device in local communities for a increasing the recycling process in the neighborhoods.
  2. Design a business model to make it sustainable and generate environmental campaigns for people.
  3. This project could also recycle Aluminum cans and other recyclable materials.
  4. Create a social hub for home recycling that also includes people who makes recycling their way of living and give them better working conditions.

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