On the 3rd August, Volvo Cars announced it has successfully used a blockchain to track recycled cobalt in the firm’s newly produced cars. The electric vehicles are the first to be manufactured with the recycled mineral traced by a blockchain. The project, as reported by
Reuters, was developed with UK blockchain firm Circulor using Hyperledger Fabric and the Oracle Blockchain Platform.
The distributed ledger technology (DLT) solution traced the mineral to cars made at Volvo’s factory in Zhejiang, China. Cobalt is considered a ‘conflict mineral’ as its mining is notorious for human rights violations, child labor, and non-sustainable processes. However, it is a key ingredient in modern batteries.
Volvo’s use of recycled cobalt eliminates these concerns. That’s not only because the mineral is re-used, but it travels much shorter distances than from mine to manufacturing.
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