KAMILO, INC. — Environmental Protection Agency SBIR Phase I: 4C

Description

To prevent plastic pollution and support the recapture of “waste” to advance a circular plastics economy, governments have mandated and corporations have made commitments to increase recycled content in plastic products. However, available recycled feedstock only meets 25% of projected demand - inevitably leading to unsubstantiated claims about product recycled content and further erosion of consumer trust. Kamilo’s proposed innovative technology solution provides crucial components to plastic circularity: 1) a first-of-its-kind, 3rd party-verified digital product certificate for the percentage of recycled content in circular plastic products; and 2) the means to present that information on a ‘percentage recycled content’ digital product label that complies with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requirements. Labeling is monitored during printing for accuracy and is linked to the history of the supply chain through the Kamilo Technology Platform. Smartphone-enabled features deliver clarity of sourcing for circular plastic products to consumers, delivering benefits for the Brands and product manufacturers. Supply chains are in urgent need of digital transformation. And plastic circularity demands measurement, traceability and reporting systems to verify how materials move throughout their lifecycles, especially from waste origination and recovery to next-life and back again. The proposed technology is highly feasible because it marries recycled plastic product manufacturing data with production facility recycled feedstock inventory data obtained from Kamilo’s geospatial technology platform for supply chain tracking and verification. The performance compared to current technologies will be transformative – today’s self-certification of recycled content is unreliable and the current 3rd party analog audit/certification methods are time-consuming, outdated, error-prone and easy to manipulate. A critical step to building circularity is increasing trust in the recycling system with demonstrable proof of claims made around use of recycled feedstock and recycled content in products. We anticipate that there are thousands of manufacturers and Brands that would welcome use of a verifiable percentage recycled content label on their products as a market differentiator and a signal to consumers of their contributions to circularity. We estimate that the market size for tracking and verification of sustainable outcomes combined with the digital verification confirming percentage of recycled plastic in individual products, just for plastic currently being recycled (<10% of plastic collected), is $500 million. Kamilo’s system also quantifies recycling’s prevention of plastic pollution and the avoidance of greenhouse gases (GHGs) associated with fossil fuel production and the manufacturing of virgin plastic. To our knowledge there are no similar technology solutions.