-
In almost all aspects of our lives
-
we have perfect information
available instantaneously,
-
My phone can tell me
everything about my finances,
-
where precisely I am on a map,
-
and the best way to my next destination,
-
all with a click of a button.
-
But this availability
of information and transparency
-
almost completely disappears
when it comes to consumer products.
-
If you go to the seafood counter
at your local supermarket,
-
you can probably choose
between several different types of fish.
-
But chances are,
they won't be able to tell you
-
who caught the fish,
where precisely it was caught,
-
whether it is sustainable
to catch it there,
-
and how it got transported.
-
And that holds true
for almost everything we buy.
-
Every can of soup,
-
every piece of meat, every T-shirt.
-
We as humans, right now,
-
are destroying the only thing
we really need to survive:
-
Our planet.
-
And most of the horrible problems
that we're facing today,
-
like climate change
-
and modern slavery in supply chains,
-
come down to decisions.
-
Human decisions to produce something
one way and not another.
-
And that's how we, as consumers,
-
end up making decisions
that harm the planet
-
or our fellow humans.
-
By choosing the wrong products.
-
But I refuse to believe
that anybody here in this room,
-
or frankly, anybody on this planet,
-
really wants to buy a product
-
that harms the planet
or our fellow humans.
-
If given the choice.
-
But you see, choice is a loaded word.
-
Choice means there's another option.
-
Choice means you can afford that option.
-
But choice also means
-
you have enough information
to make an informed decision.
-
And that information nowadays
simply just doesn't exist.
-
Or at least it's really,
really hard to access,
-
But I think this is about to change.
-
Because we can use technology
to solve this information problem.
-
And many of the specific technologies
that we need to do that
-
have become better and cheaper
over the recent years,
-
and are now ready to be used at scale.
-
So, over the past two years,
-
my team and I have been working
-
with one of the world's largest
conservation organizations, WWF,
-
and we've founded
a company called OpenSC,
-
where SC stands for supply chain.
-
And we believe that by using technology
-
we can help to create
-
transparency and traceability
in supply chains,
-
and through that,
help to completely revolutionize
-
the way that we buy
and also produce products as humans.
-
Now, some of this is going to sound
a little bit like science fiction,
-
but it's already happening.
-
Let me explain.
-
So, in order to solve
this information problem,
-
we need to do three things:
-
Verify, trace and share.
-
Verify specific sustainability
-
and ethical production claims
-
in a data-based and automated way.
-
Then trace those
individual physical products
-
throughout their supply chains,
-
and finally, share
that information with consumers
-
in a way that truly gives them a choice,
-
and lets them make consumption decisions
-
that are more aligned with their values.
-
I'm going to use a real product,
-
and a supply chain where we've made
all of this a reality already.
-
A Patagonian toothfish,
-
or Chilean sea bass,
as it's called in the US.
-
Number one, verify.
-
Verify how something is produced.
-
But not just by saying,
"Trust me, this is good,
-
trust me, we've done
all the right things,"
-
but by producing evidence
for that individual physical product,
-
and the way it was produced.
-
By producing evidence
-
for a specific sustainability
or ethical production claim.
-
So for example, in the case of the fish,
-
has this fish been caught in an area
where there's enough of them
-
so that it's sustainable
to catch it there,
-
and not in a marine protected area?
-
So what we're doing here
-
is we're taking almost real-time
GPS data from the ship,
-
the ship that's fishing,
-
and that tells us where the ship is,
-
and where it's going at what speed.
-
And we can then combine that
with other types of data,
-
like, for example,
how deep the sea floor is.
-
And combining all of this information,
-
our machine-learning algorithms
can then verify in an automated way
-
whether the ship is only fishing
where it's supposed to, or not.
-
And as sensors become cheaper,
-
we can put them in more places.
-
And that means we can capture more data,
-
and combining that
with advancements in data science,
-
it means that we can now verify
-
specific sustainability
and ethical production claims
-
in an automated, real-time,
and ongoing manner.
-
And that really lays the basis
for this information revolution.
-
So, number two, trace.
-
Trace those individual physical products
-
so that we can truly say
-
that the claim that we've verified
about a certain product
-
actually belongs
to that individual product,
-
that we as consumers
have right in front of us.
-
Because, without
that level of traceability,
-
all that we've really
verified in the first place
-
is that somebody, somewhere, at some point
-
caught a fish in a sustainable way
-
or didn't harm the employee
when asking them to produce a T-shirt,
-
or didn't use pesticides when growing
a vegetable that didn't actually need it.
-
Only if I give a product
an identity from the start
-
and then trace it
throughout the whole supply chain,
-
can this claim and the value
that's been created
-
by producing it in the right way
-
truly stay with it.
-
Now, I've talked about cheaper sensors.
-
There are many other
technological developments
-
that make all of this much more possible
today than every before.
-
For example, the falling costs of tags.
-
You give a product a name,
-
a serial number, an identity,
-
the tag is its passport.
-
What you can see here
is a toothfish being caught.
-
This is what's called a long line fishery,
-
so the fish are coming up
onto the boat on individual hooks.
-
And as soon as the fish is on board,
-
it is killed, and then after that,
-
we insert a small tag
into the fish's flesh.
-
And in that tag, there is an RFID chip
with a unique serial number,
-
and that tag follows the fish
throughout the whole supply chain,
-
and makes it really easy
to sense its presence
-
at any port, on any truck
or in any processing plant.
-
But consumers can't really read RFID tags.
-
And so, when it comes to filleting
and packaging the fish,
-
we read the RFID tag and then remove it.
-
And then we add a unique QR code
to the packaging of the fish.
-
And that QR code then points back
to the same information
-
that we've verified about the fish
in the first place.
-
And so, depending on the type
of product that we're working with,
-
we may use QR codes, bar codes, RFID tags
-
or other tag technologies.
-
But there are also technologies
-
that are at the brink
of large-scale breakthrough,
-
that make tags themselves obsolete.
-
Like, for example,
-
analyzing a product for trace elements,
-
that can then tell you quite accurately
where it is actually from.
-
Then there's blockchain.
-
A decentralized technology
can act as a catalyst for this revolution.
-
Because it can help mitigate
some of the trust issues
-
that are inherent
to giving people information,
-
and then asking them
to change their consumption behavior
-
because of that information.
-
And so, we use blockchain technology
-
where it adds value to what we're doing.
-
But importantly,
-
we don't let the limitations
that this technology still has today,
-
like, for example,
with regards to scaling,
-
we don't let that stand in our way.
-
And that brings us to the third point.
-
Share.
-
How to share the information
that we've verified and tracked
-
about where a product is from,
how it was produced,
-
and how it got to where it is?
-
How to share this information
-
is really different
from product to product.
-
And different from where you buy it.
-
You behave differently
in those situations.
-
You are stressed and time-poor
in the supermarket.
-
Or with short attention span over dinner,
-
because your date is so cute.
-
Or you are critical and inquisitive
-
when researching
for a larger purchase online.
-
And so for our fish,
-
we've developed a digital experience
-
that works when buying the fish
in a freezer in a fish specialty store,
-
and that gives you all of the information
about the fish and its journey.
-
But we also worked with a restaurant
-
and developed a different
digital experience
-
that only summarizes the key facts
about the fish and its journey,
-
and works better in a dinner setting,
-
and hopefully, there
doesn't annoy your date too much.
-
Now, that brings us full circle.
-
We've verified that the fish was caught
-
in an area where
it's sustainable to do so.
-
We've then traced it throughout
the entire supply chain
-
to maintain its identity and all
the information that's attached to it.
-
And then, we've shared
that information with consumers
-
in a way that gives them a choice
-
and lets them make consumption decisions
-
that are more in line with their values.
-
Now, for this fish example,
this is already rolled out at scale.
-
This season,
-
the entire fleet of the world's largest
toothfish fishing company,
-
Austral Fisheries,
-
is tagging every single fish
that they catch
-
and that ends up in their premium
branded "Glacier 51" product.
-
And you can already buy this fish.
-
And with it, you can have all
of the information I talked about today
-
and much more,
-
attached to each individual fish
or portion of the fish that you may buy.
-
But this is not a fish or seafood thing.
-
We're working on many,
many different commodities and products
-
and their supply chains across the globe.
-
From dairy to fruit and vegetables,
-
to non-food products made out of wood.
-
As a consumer, all of this
may sound like a huge burden.
-
Because you don't have time
to look at all of this information
-
every time you buy something.
-
And I don't expect you to,
-
because you'll have help with that.
-
In the future, we'll leave the decision
of which specific product to buy
-
increasingly up to machines.
-
An algorithm will know enough about you
-
to make those decisions for you,
so you don't have to.
-
And maybe it will even do
a better job at it.
-
In a recent study, 85 percent of those
-
buying a product
through a virtual assistant
-
said that they, on occasion,
-
actually went with the top
product recommendation
-
of that virtual assistant,
-
rather than the specific product or brand
-
that they set out
to buy in the first place.
-
You just say you need toilet paper,
-
it's then an algorithm that decides
which brand, price point,
-
or whether you go with recycled or not.
-
Well, nowadays this is usually based
on what you bought in the past,
-
or whoever pays the most to the company
behind the virtual assistant.
-
But why shouldn't that be also
based on your values?
-
Knowing that you want
to buy planet-friendly
-
and knowing whether and how much
you're willing and able to pay for that.
-
Now, that will make it easy and seamless,
-
but still based
on granular effects and data
-
to choose the right product.
-
Not by necessarily doing it yourself,
-
but by asking an algorithm
-
that knows how much you care
about this planet.
-
Not by necessarily doing it yourself,
-
but by asking an algorithm
-
that is never time-poor or distracted,
-
or with short attention span
because of the cute date,
-
and that knows how much
you care about this planet
-
and the people living on it,
-
by asking that algorithm to look
at all of that information for you
-
and to decide for you.
-
If we have reliable
and trustworthy information like that
-
and the right systems that make use of it,
-
consumers will support those
who are doing the right thing
-
by producing products
in a sustainable and ethical way.
-
They will support them every time
-
by choosing their good over others.
-
And that means that goods,
producers and processors and retailers
-
will get rewarded.
-
And bad actors will be forced
to adjust their practices,
-
or get out of business.
-
And we need that.
-
If we want to continue to live together
on this beautiful planet,
-
we really need it.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)
Erin Gregory
Updated 2/13/2020
12:52 - 12:57
And that means that goods,
producers and processors and retailers
-->
And that means that good
producers and processors and retailers