Provenance - using transparency tech to tackle greenwashing
by Startacus Admin
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The lowdown on London-based greentech startup Provenance and its digital solution to verify corporate sustainability.
With a (too slowly) increasing awareness of our ability to actually be carbon neutral and use fully recyclable packing materials and being entirely net-zero comes an increase in the number of claims of being such. Not all of these claims are accurate, to be generous. There are all kinds of loopholes that businesses can use in order to seem like they are being green when they actually are not.
We recently featured Greenback, a startup ensuring that recycled plastic really is recycled, because some methods of recycling result in a plastic that is almost indistinct from brand new plastic. It is this kind of tracking that is needed to keep every aspect of sustainability on the level.
London-based greentech startup Provenance has created a digital verification system for this very reason. Provenance’s product, Proof Point, can be integrated into ecommerce pages, showing customers evidence of their statements of sustainability, drawn from 81 independent verification organisations.
When we see a business claiming that their products or processes are sustainable, we have no way of knowing if this is true or not, and it is too easy for them to either outright lie or subtly word things to make it sound like they are sustainable when they are not. This is called greenwashing, and Provenance will bring this deceptive practice to light so we know when to give a business a miss.
In March, Provenance announced that it had raised £4.1 million in a third funding round led by Working Capital Innovation Fund and Nordic Eye, with participation from the Brandtech Group, Digital Currency Group, and Angel investors. This comes after a seed round of £650,000 in 2017 and another, undisclosed amount in 2018. The funding will be used to expand the startup’s reach, attracting more and more business to join the 150+ they already work with, and to further develop the product.
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Published on: 25th March 2022
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