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2021 Sharing Green Economy Organization of the Year: Open Litter Map and Litter Coin

I witnessed something yesterday that was truly amazing. What I was witnessing was history in the making. It was a moment that humanity turned the corner on cleaning up the planet. It was a group of people from around the world defining in real time the new green labor economics of the future on a live Zoom call. These global citizens were engaged in the use of, and the design of a smartphone app called Open Litter Map which uses its own cryptocurrency called LitterCoin. The economics are still at the early stages of what I would fully define as complete Sharing Green Economics (SGE’s) but there are key components of it that are necessary for creating open participation, transparent data, and some kind of reward for doing litter cleanup, either for intrinsic value or monetary incentives. The endeavor is not only sustained by its crypto currency but also through a catalyst and DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) called Cardano. At this point in time, Open Litter Map and Cardano may not have the level of cutting-edge DAO elements, robust governance, and the advanced project-based components that organizations like Hypha DHO and its SEEDS currency have. And, they might not have all of the regenerative and sustainable blockchain pioneering that The Common Stack has. However, the extraordinary green labor relevance of Open Litter Map is in the doing. And the doing starts with Citizen Science. Citizen Science, which is massively underrated, is just the first step towards something greater. Because Open Litter Map is not only about gathering photographic, quantity, type, and location of plastic and other garbage that litter the urban and suburban landscape, but also about picking up, and disposing of the debris. This allows people from all over the world to participate, and this is a game changer for the environment. And, this is what makes Open Litter Map and Litter Coin the 2021 Sharing Green Economy Organization of the Year. Hope and action have arrived. 2022 will be the year that we finally turn the corner on climate change and the environment, because decision makers will finally understand that real change happens when you include people who want to participate.

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YourEPA is the Sharing Green Economy

Four years ago my colleagues and I gathered the entire EPA dataset from over 400 municipalities in order to set up a blockchain platform to democratize and crowdsource pollution data collection. We called it YourEPA and it embodied everything that the Sharing Green Economy represented. At the time I didn’t completely understand how significant the connection between the the two concepts were, even after a colleague told me flat out: “YourEPA is the Sharing Green Economy.”

The following is the original description of YourEPA that helped get us into Madrona Venture Lab’s Blockchain Startup weekend:

YourEPA is democratizing environmental data collection to create the world’s most comprehensive and crowd sourced environmental data set.
The basic idea for YourEPA is to use distributed ledgers and to democratize environmental data collection. Now, you may wonder: “Why does environmental data NEED to be democratized.
The United Nation’s Environmental Chief, Erik Solheim, put it best:
He said, “The profit of destroying nature or polluting the planet is nearly always privatized, while the costs of polluting the planet or the cost of destroying ecosystems is nearly always socialized.”
To change this, we are working on a method that converts the typical “Proof of Work” blockchain concept into a “Proof of Information Capture” concept.
In a cryptocurrency like bitcoin, new currency is “mined” by powerful computers solving complex math problems. With YourEPA, currency will be “mined” by contributing verifiable environmental data from IoT sensors that anyone can purchase and use to “Mine” YourEPA’s coin.
The benefits of these contributed data will be accessed via token burn, which creates an economy for it. By doing this, we believe we can create the right economic incentives to produce the most comprehensive, robust, and granular data set on environmental data the world has ever seen. We have copied, backed up, and created processes to continuously update the entire EPA data set. We found that the EPA’s data is not comprehensive, is starting to not be updated, and is not granular enough for enforcement, let alone research. But these data will form the “genesis” block for YourEPA’s distributed ledger. And it is our hope that by enhancing the genesis block with democratized data collection, we can help humans protect our planet by helping us understand our impact on our environment better than we have before.

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What is Green Micro Labor?

Green Micro Labor is a new economic term applied to environmental decentralized applications that utilize blockchain micropayments to reward earth friendly actions such as picking up plastic, reporting air and water quality, and much more. This labor is typically less intensive than gig economy work, and mostly promotes a more sustainable way of living.

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Juneteenth and the Environment

In recognition of Juneteenth on June 19th, The Sharing Green Economy will be observing this holiday as it marks an important day in history. The time has come for a Green Economy that includes everyone. As Van Jones states in his book “The Green Collar Economy”: we can indeed have one solution that can fix our two biggest problems.

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The Premise of the Sharing Green Economy

What was the most successful economy of the past decade that got workers back to work after the economic downturn in 2008 and empowered the masses to earn supplemental income to make up for their losses? It was the Sharing Economy with companies like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb. People had an instant opportunity to use their shared resources such as the car they owned or extra room in their house to earn revenue.

For many, the Sharing Economy was perfect timing. The economic downturn brought panic as people were trying to figure out how to get by. A similar helplessness is happening now. This time people are watching increasing atmospheric temperatures, more severe storms, and unstoppable wildfires from California to Australia, and everywhere in between.

So why not capitalize on what has been successful in the past to solve this current problem? This time people can use a different set of shared resources and tools to make a difference. That is where the Sharing Green Economy comes in.

The premise of the Sharing Green Economy starts at the individual level; specifically from each and every one of us asking what we can do do make a difference about the environment and climate change.

When the average person asks themself this question: What can I do about climate change? they typically arrive at the same two conclusions:

1. I can limit my own consumptions of energy and resources. And,

2. Only big business and big government can solve the problem.

These resulting conclusion bring about the following sentiments: conclusion number 1 is boring, uninspiring, and isolating (yet necessary), and conclusion number 2 leaves a feeling of helplessness and pessimism, (and unknowingly inaccurate).

In fact is there is so much that we haven’t thought of that will empower citizens and consumers to take action and use shared resources, profit from, and make the climate fight a lot more interesting and inspiring. Humans are innovators and everyone has the capacity to solve problems.

The Sharing Green Economy is about us. Keeping busy and tapping into your creative abilities to find your own solutions will go a long way to ease your panic and worry about what we are facing.

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2018 Sharing Green Economy Company of the Year is the BITES foodie app!

After a comprehensive analysis, The Sharing Green Economy Company of the Year award for 2108 goes to the BITES foodie app!

https://www.bites.mobi/

Congratulations Roza Ferdowsmakan, founder of BITES.

This is a true self-sustaining ecosystem of foodie –> chef –> farm –> chef –> foodie –> farm

There are lots of shared resources within the BITES sustainable business model, leading to a greener planet, while generating revenue.

Well done!

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Bites Foodie App (www.bites.mobi) is a Sharing Green Economy business

Please allow us to introduce the Bites Foodie App (www.bites.mobi) as an example of a Sharing Green Economy company. Here is a description of this business followed by our assessment matrix.
Foodies + Chefs + Farms = Bites Foodie App 
So, what is Bites Foodie App? it’s a free mobile app for foodies…think Airbnb for farm-to-table dining experiences in your own home.
Here’s how it works: The Bites foodie app connects foodies with local chefs (professional chefs, culinary students, and home cooks) for in-home, farm-to-table dining experiences. These chefs support local growers by sourcing fresh ingredients from these local growers and then taking these ingredients into the home of the foodie to create a complete dining experience from scratch.
As part of the sharing green economy, the Bites Foodie App seeks to do good for people and the planet at three levels:
For Foodies: The people at Bites believe in making culinary adventures available at all budgetary levels so that more socio-economic levels can participate – inclusivity; the app is also about celebrating diversity through various people and cuisines that enter the foodie’s home – they seek to represent all cultures and ethnic backgrounds on this app through their cuisines; and the app is also about community building – neighbors cooking for one another; foodies connect with culinary talent in their communities and locally sourced foods, over meaningful, memorable, intimate dining experiences in their own homes.
They’re interested in getting more people to participate in becoming part of the sustainability solution. That’s why their app is designed to provide culinary experiences for all socio-economic levels. Bites wants to make farm-to-table a regular, normal way of life for everyone, at all budgetary levels. Many modes of thinking about how to change the food landscape are built on the “education” model of educating people about why sustainability is good for people and the planet. They take an entirely different approach. they want to engage people in the solution itself, making it fun and easy to support localized sourcing of our food. When people have farm-to-table dining experiences in their homes, they are giving jobs to people (professional chefs, culinary students, and home cooks) in their communities and they are also supporting local farms (because the ingredients for these farm-to-table meals are sourced from local farms by the chefs). So, people are becoming part of the solution without even knowing it. That’s the beauty of it. Once they become part of the solution, they are incentivized to continue on that path without separately being “educated” about it, as these intimate farm-to-table dining experiences are more memorable, meaningful and cost-effective for the foodies who are getting the ball rolling in this self-sustaining ecosystem of foodie –> chef –> farm –> chef –> foodie –> farm. You see, when a foodie reserves a chef’s services through they’re app, the chef goes to a local farm and sources ingredients and then takes those ingredients into the foodie’s home and cooks from scratch…during this dining experience, the chef talks about where he sourced his ingredients, designed to organically both educate the foodie and peek the interest of the foodie to go to that farm and source directly from that farmer. 
For Chefs: Bites believes in economic empowerment – jobs; professionals, students, and homemakers all generate an income with zero overhead, doing what they love doing – cooking – and sharing that with the community; these chefs set their own pricing, availability and dishes they want to offer — this is essentially, Airbnb for chefs. Chefs share revenue with Bites Foodie App as follows: 80% to chef / 17% to app / 3% to credit card processor.
Bites is interested in empowering the 99% to become masters of their own destinies. Bites believes in empowering the 99% with the freedom to work for themselves, generating an income for themselves with zero overhead, on their own terms…setting their own pricing, availability and menus. When people are powerful in their own lives and can take control of their own schedules and work, they are happier people and better with their own families, have improved mental and emotional health, and are better for society as positive, contributing members. Moreover, food is the most fundamental, most primal source of connection we have with other human beings. From an evolutionary perspective, we’ve always come together as families, as tribes, as villages, as communities, over shared meals. It’s how we bond most organically. This bond can be instrumental in helping our communities’ building efforts, and it can also be instrumental in sharing our stories, our recipes, our vulnerabilities, our concerns as human beings. Beyond that, chefs are the initial bit of glue between foodies and farms, helping foodies understand why it’s important to source locally – for flavor and nutrition, but also for stronger communities. When we eat farm-to-table, we are promoting seasonal, more nutritious, more flavorful sensory experiences, better health, and stronger communities from an economic standpoint, as our dollars are going to support local growers in our own communities, rather than going to someone growing produce in Chile, Mexico, or California. 
 
For Local Farms: Bites supports local growers by giving them visibility and encouraging chefs and consumers to source directly from these local growers. These farms include urban farms, micro farms, co-ops, backyard gardens, community gardens, organic, family-owned small farms, and Arizona wineries. Right now, the vast majority of local growers are not in any directory and they are not on anyone’s radar. As the vast majority of populations live in urban settings, it makes a lot of sense to give visibility to small local growers within urban communities, in a move toward sustainability and reduction of food waste, so that we can move away from globalized, commercial food production, which has no upside for people in terms of nutritional content and only adds to the global carbon footprint. By sending chefs and foodies direct to growers, Bites can increase growers’ profits and decrease their waste (in metro-phoenix, they currently spend upwards of $2,000/yr just to participate in farmer’s markets, and yet they end up not selling more than 50% of the produce that they harvested and took to these local farmers markets). Bites has made it easy for farms to participate: Farmers simply need to go to the Bites website (www.bites.mobi) and click on “farms & wineries” to create a free grower profile. They keep 100% of their profits. no one takes a cut from them. Bites wants to incentivize locally sourced food and support local farming. Food that is grown locally gets picked ripe, and thus develops its full potential for nutrition, flavor and texture, in contrast to food that is flown in, shipped in, or trucked in from anyplace else – fruits and vegetables that are brought in from out of state had to be picked unripe to make the journey, or they’d rot in transport. Thus, they actually have very little to zero nutritional content in them when you buy them at the grocery store. There is something very wrong with that model.
With the Bites Foodie App, the people behind Bites are injecting money and support into their own communities, into their own economy, making their communities stronger, more vibrant, healthier, more economically empowered, and culturally inclusive. To join their tribe as a foodie or chef…download “Bites Foodie App” on the App Store or Google Play, or visit their website: www.bites.mobi to participate as a local grower. Bites Foodie App is available within the entire USA.
They’re interested in giving visibility and support to local growers. Why? Because the future of our health as human beings is dependent on it. Right now, produce and fruit that is grown conventionally and/or has to be transported from location X to location Y, has hardly any nutrition in it. Why? Because it failed to grow in nutrient healthy soil and it failed to go through the full photosynthesis cycle. Additionally, food that’s brought in from elsewhere only adds to the global carbon footprint. Food that’s sourced locally is green and sustainable in that it doesn’t have to travel and it doesn’t have to get stored anywhere. Local farms can help us get healthier in sustainable ways…when Bites sends chefs and foodies direct to growers, those growers know that there’s a financial upside for them through the demand for their produce. They become incentivized to grow more locally for local consumers. This is designed to move us away from globalized, commercial food production toward localized sourcing of our food.
Our Sharing Green Economy assessment matrix for Bites Foodie:
Is it Green? Yes.
How so?
– Less transportation costs to ship commercial food production to local communities
– Less food waste
Is it Sharing? Yes
How so?

– The local gardens and farms that are utilized wouldn’t normally be ‘shared’; such as urban farms, micro farms, co-ops, backyard gardens, community gardens, organic, and family-owned small farms. Right now, the vast majority of local growers are not in any directory and they are not on anyone’s radar.

– Chefs bring their own personal pots and pans and cooking tools. They share their own personal schedule, their own pricing, their own menus they want to offer, and their expertise that wouldn’t typically be tapped into outside of their regular job.

– The Foodie shares her home, kitchen, stove, counter top and sink with the chef who uses those to do the meal prep & cooking.

Is it Profitable? Yes
How so?
– Local growers receive 100% of their produce sales (with less overhead from a food-to-table process)
– For the profit on cooking events, Chefs receive 80% of the profits, Bites Foodie App receives 17%, and 3% for credit card processing
We wish Bites Foodie much success with their business!