VERA: a trust score for recovered materials
A credit-bureau-style trust layer for recovered plastic, paper and metal, so buyers and banks can price a shipment before it arrives.
Trade · Recycling markets
Recovered plastic, paper and metal cross borders every day, but a buyer or a bank cannot see what is inside a bale until it arrives. Economists call this the lemons problem: when quality cannot be checked, honest sellers get the same low price as cheats, and good material leaves the market.
The idea
VERA, short for Verified Exchange for Recovered Materials, is a credit-bureau-style trust layer for secondary raw materials. It has three parts:
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Registry | A free registry that matches sellers and buyers of recovered materials |
| Risk score | A per-consignment score that rates how likely a shipment is to be what it claims |
| Finance rail | A good score helps a seller get trade finance from banks that are wary of waste shipments today |
Where it comes from
VERA grew out of my MSc coursework in environmental management. It borrows from four Nobel-winning ideas: Akerlof's lemons problem, Spence's signalling, Roth's market design and Ostrom's rules for shared resources.
I entered it in the 2nd UNCTAD Supply Chain Innovation Challenge and the MIT Solve 2027 Global Economic Prosperity Challenge. The pilot covers plastic, paper and metal.