Argentina's government to offer cryptocurrency as recycling incentive

The Ministry of Industry, Argentina, has announced it is partnering with The Hive Project to create a circular economy model designed to promote recycling in urban neighborhoods in the country. The project aims to create blockchain-based cryptocurrency to incentivize recycling and waste management.

The new program will encourage an "alternative of citizen participation to recover and process” materials distributed in urban neighborhoods in cities in exchange for the cryptocurrency called JellyCoin.

JellyCoin “offers a decentralized, open and transparent management system, providing a high level of security and allowing the community, and not the banks, to define the rules of operation of the currency," according to the news release.

The platform connects processors to collectors, who are responsible for sorting items according to environmental regulations. According to an online report by Coin Rivet, citizens can use JellyCoins in local shops and to pay taxes and municipal fees.

Minister of Industry Luis Lichowski and Cabinet Coordinator Fernando Arias, along with Gabriel Gortari of the Collaborative Development Foundation, co-founder of the Foundation for Collaborative Development Iván Zubilewicz and researcher Sebastián Valdecantos, agreed to begin analyzing the application of the project as a “collaborative waste management model.”

Lichowski says making use of scrap contributes to the care of the environment and at the same time benefits the missionary society. Zubilewicz explains that because the Hive Project connects scrap generators with processors, the model promotes “industrial development through its use.”

During a planning meeting, education, training, software development and development of the plastic and aluminum industry were established as “lines of action.”

“The monetary stage of the incentive for people to behave in a certain way, that is, to separate the scrap in parallel with the awareness allows rewarding households that perform the separation of scrap with a cryptocurrency that can be used in stores or in payment of municipal or provincial fees,” Valdecantos says.

There are similar initiatives going on in Latin America that encourage residents to recycle in exchange for cryptocurrency, including the launch of PepsiCo Latin America’s “Recycling with Purpose” program that rewards consumers with “ecocoins” in exchange for plastic materials. The ecocoins platform will expand to 10 countries in Latin America during the next two years, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Guatemala and Jamaica.