Guest Episode: The Other Bar - Tackling Inequality for the SDGs Colour of Innovation

This is a guest episode from Ecuador, in South America, where UNDP Ecuador, in their search for innovative solutions for economic inclusion problems, launched The Other Bar, a chocolate bar made with cocoa from the Amazon, that comes with a ‘digital passport’ (tracks cocoa from bean to a bar), and an impact token that acts as a supercharged brand marketing campaign and allows consumers to reinvest in farmers and communities who brought them the bar. This experiment tests the hypothesis that consumers will reward sustainable business practices and brands (over non-sustainable ones) and are likely to pay a premium price on a product.
The Other Bar was designed to have a blockchain-powered token that gives consumers a choice of reinvesting its value in a discount on their next purchase of the chocolate bar, or a cocoa tree to be planted in the community where the resource for the chocolate bar came from (with the ability to track when and where the tree actually gets planted).
This initial experiment built a solution targeting a supply chain around a single product, but its principles and platform apply to other sectors- it is ready to be deployed to empower consumers and investors to rethink various business practices and sectors, from water efficiency and energy conservation to fair labor practices and reduction of carbon emissions.
This episode, produced by UNDP Ecuador, the Fairchain Foundation and John Weich, tells the story of the inception of the project in the voices of their agents in the Zamora province, in the southern Amazonia of Ecuador.