Traceability system: a platform to improve management, recording, and tracking throughout the waste cycle.

Currently, the consumer product packaging value chain lacks reliable information on the quantities and types of materials collected, recycled, and reintroduced into the market. To increase the credibility of circularity metric reporting, the implementation of a traceability system for these materials is necessary.

The purpose of this system is to record the journey of packaging, from consumption to disposal, through the subsequent collection, sorting, packaging, transportation, recycling, and manufacturing of new packaging or other products, promoting the circularity of materials with a positive environmental and social impact.

For this reason, from Conexión Reciclado - a platform developed by La Ciudad Posible that works with companies, municipalities, urban recyclers and waste collectors to reduce and recover waste - we are implementing an application that allows the different actors in the recycling value chain to record, in a confidential and secure manner, the movements and transactions of the different materials used to manufacture packaging, from cardboard, paper, plastics, metals, glass and long-life packaging.

This tool seeks to transition from a manual metrics recording system to a digitalized, reliable and secure one, where tonnage records can be cross-referenced with companies' neutrality and/or supply objectives, and where the results, in addition to being accurate, are auditable and subsequently certifiable. This allows us, firstly, to understand the system and its flows; secondly, to avoid double counting of tons of material; and thirdly, it functions as a management system that provides information to improve productivity and the management of operations within the materials recovery circuit.

This project is made possible through a strategic alliance with Delterra, an NGO that empowers cities and communities in Argentina, Brazil, and Indonesia to build integrated, sustainable, and scalable recycling systems, as implementer; Empower, a global leader in recyclable traceability, as blockchain system provider; and GS1, an organization authorized to assign global standard barcodes and working with major consumer goods companies, as the information standards setter.

Since early 2024, we have been working in collaboration with more than 30 circular economy stakeholders: municipalities, urban recycling cooperatives, collectors, and recycling industries across the country. For this process, each stakeholder, using a phone or PC, records the type of material and clarifies its quantity, geolocation, and adds a representative photo to the system. The data is reflected in our dashboard, which automatically categorizes the information. These systematic reports will prevent greenwashing, build data credibility, and enable the tracking of recycled products and the equipment behind them.

In Argentina, extended producer responsibility regulations still do not exist, so this initiative is essential to lay one of the main foundations for a Voluntary Management System for post-consumer packaging: material traceability. Currently, in anticipation of the debate on the Packaging Law, Cempre, LCP, ARS, and the Argentine Packaging Institute are already structuring a voluntary management system. "GAP for EPR" (The Global Action Partnership for Extended Producer Responsibility), an initiative promoted by Prevent Waste Alliance, GIZ (German Agency for International Cooperation), WWF, and OECD, and with the support of UNEP and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, offers technical assistance to promote Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), analyze the recycling system, and develop a working proposal for the voluntary system. And our traceability system is expected to function as evidence of a reliable record of the materiality, its environmental effects (that the material did not impact open-air landfills) and social effects (that the chain respects working and social conditions).