How supply chain transparency can help the planet | Markus Mutz

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 longline 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 nonfood 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 products.

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 goods over others.

And that means that good 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)