Tracking the Lifecycle Impact of Billions of Products on Hedera

Sustainability and claiming that a product is green is not accepted at face value. The Business Journal reported that in TD Bank’s Annual Consumer Report, 62% of millennials said they are conscious of where they shop and what products they buy. Consumers, regulators and managing bodies demand companies to prove their sustainability claims. Furthermore, as production standards are written into law, companies must show they are meeting those expectations.

Introducing atma.io. “What does atma Mean? Atma is a Sanskrit word for the soul,” said Max Winograd, VP of Connected Products at Avery Dennison. Atma is all about sustainability and circularity. It is unlocking the unique end-to-end value of a product. Atma tracks the granular data of a product’s lifecycle, which can be anywhere from 10-20 transactions. Atma.iO has more than 22 billion products connected to the platform, and each item has 10-20 different data points of transactions and events. The tracked transactions for each item include “when it was made, when it was shipped, when it was received, when it was sold, and when it was recycled,” said Winograd.

Once the atma platform is complete, the transactions will post into the Hedera network, where each input will be immutable and sharable. Atma.iO and Hedera have a native integration, high throughput and highspeed transaction sharing. “[The partnership] activates item visibility and stores the information in an immutable way, through Hedera,” said Winograd. Atma.io is driving sustainability through traceability. Every product will have a unique digital identity and life, similar to how the UHFRID on apparel items has individual sensors.

“As consumers care more about this and want more transparency, the demand for products like this will increase,” said Godschalk. The lifecycle assessment used to be so hypothetical. Now it has real-time, accurate data linked to it. “Critical need in the marketplace for really accurate, really granular, and accessible by many different stakeholders,” said Winograd.

Change can only indeed happen if there is a starting measurement. With atma, products can achieve a more sustainable lifecycle. By counting an accurate carbon footprint, companies can accurately account for holes and reduce the carbon footprint. NFT’s are in the mix and atma will reward its clients with tokens. The carbon tokens through atma will be available later this year, in Q3. “From the regulator and conscious consumer perspectives, it’s so much more tangible and satisfying knowing that ‘this particular product’ has been traced versus an estimate or an aggregate,” said Godschalk.