I have to admit I had never heard of REA before I started following the Holochain project. I pick up refuse on the side of the road all the time - in my neighborhood, on the streets, on hiking trails, etc Much of it is not recyclable in my area, and other things I struggle to know what to do with (eg e-cigarettes, electrical wires, styrofoam, etc). I work in an industry where chain of custody and LEAN manufacturing are very important, and I’ve worked on carbon footprint analyses and have recently encountered the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility. The confluence of these topics got me thinking about waste management and the responsibilities of producers and consumers of products.
What if a chain of custody system could be created to uniquely identify every product? Each product could be registered in a database much like IMDS that explains its composition and disposal optimum methods. Each product (and its packaging and subcomponents) could be identified with either a physical barcode (as most products already are) or a digital barcode (where applicable) that ties the product to the original manufacturer as well as the chain of owners. Each producer would be responsible for the ultimate disposition and recycling/dismantling of the product, and each consumer would have an obligation to properly dispose of the product. Failure to comply with proper disposal could be tracked in the REA chain of custody - basically the last owner would be fined/responsible if he say, threw the product on the side of the road. Each producer would be responsible for creating the collection system and recycling program and would be incentivized to design the product for easy disassembly and reuse. Producers could also track their products and disposal through the value chain, and REA could be used by consumers to locate the closest collection points for each product. Most products and packages are already identified with barcodes, and the information could be nested. There may be some information loss in the products if the barcode is removed or destroyed, and this requires some consideration.
What do you think? Is this pie in the sky, or could it be achieved? It seems it basically consists of a bunch of tables and a defined protocol (for labeling the product, defining its composition and disposal, and tracking ownership through the value chain). Most products and packages are already identified with multiple layers of direct markings, and points of sale (eg stores) already track barcode information. Some might criticize this initiative from the perspective of personal privacy, but we already sacrifice our privacy to credit card companies and Amazon. Perhaps the security layer of Holochain and the web of trust could play a role in maintaining privacy while tracking ownership for those who need to know (eg producers and potentially law enforcement).
Anyway, it’s an idea. Is anyone already working on this? What do you think?