Recently, the venture arms of corporate giants Volvo and Total invested in blockchain traceability startup Circulor that helps reduce child labor in Africa and aspires to work with Tesla, GM and Ford.

Prior
to an investment by its venture arm, Volvo was testing Circulor’s
platform for over a year. The startup was helping the carmaker to verify
the origins of cobalt used in its batteries. Cobalt, as is with many
other raw materials, is not always ethically sourced. Circulor is also
tracking the origins of another important raw material for car
manufacturing, mica, which is used for insulation.


Buy mica from Madagascar or Russia?


Circulor CEO Doug Johnson-Poensgen discussed these issues with Cointelegraph:


“The
problem with mica is that just like cobalt, it's got a whole plethora
of charges around responsible sourcing like child labor, this time in
Madagascar. So responsibly sourced mica comes from places like Russia,
which is where we're tracking it from. Yet you get stuff much more
cheaply from Madagascar that's dug up by kids in working conditions
which were appalling. And clearly, those are unacceptable risks for a
responsible car manufacturer.”

The investment will
help Circulor improve its machine learning algorithms. The company is
trying to train it so it will be able to distinguish between children
and adults. Then, it would be able to use aerial imagery to determine
whether a company employs children in its mining operations.


Electric cars have a bigger CO2 footprint


Another
important use case for Circulor is tracking the carbon footprint of car
manufacturing throughout the supply chain. Ironically, according to
Johnson, the carbon footprint of an electric car manufacturer is much
higher than a fuel-powered one and the battery accounts for more than
half of it:


“Of course, the carbon footprint between a
normal car and an electric vehicle even out. But the purpose of trying
to attribute carbon is to enable the car manufacturer to better engage
the supply chain in order to procure sustainably alongside price and
quality. That's why the press release from Volvo also talks about CO2,
because it starts with a chain of custody of materials.”


Prejudice against public blockchains


After originally prototyping its solution on Ethereum (ETH),
Circular switched to Hyperledger Fabric. Johnson explains that, at
least partially, the switch was made because of the prejudice that
existed in the corporate world against public blockchains:


“The
reason we went with a private permissioned blockchain was partly
because of prejudice by our target customers who are not used to
transparency in supply chains, who have commercial sensitivities to
consider between their relationship with their customers. And many of
the potential customers we were speaking to certainly two and a half
years ago or so, just didn't see how a public blockchain could be
configured in a way that would maintain their commercial
confidentiality.”

He admits the possibility that in
the next few years many of the first-generation solutions might have to
be rebuilt on public blockchains. And even while using permissioned
blockchains, Johnson believes that interoperability is the key as no
single solution will prevail throughout the automotive industry.


Expanding to Tesla, Ford & GM


When asked whether Circulor has plans to expand its clientele to Tesla, Ford or GM, Johnson replied:


“The
short answer is all of that is yes, we have. So those car manufacturers
that you've just named will be buying batteries from the sort of
battery manufacturers we're working with. We're just about to start
onboarding to other battery manufacturers. And we have a  number of
battery factories who have approached us because they know about the
work that we're doing.”

As the world is becoming more aware of the ethical dilemmas involved in manufacturing, Tesla has become the most valuable car manufacturer in the world.



source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/startup-helps-reduce-child-labor-in-africa-aspires-to-work-with-tesla