OpenSC
Verify low-carbon, sustainable food production

Global food systems drive 34% of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions every year, and 80% of those food emissions happen “at source” (e.g., on the farm, at sea, etc., as opposed to during processing or packaging). At the same time, 70% of global production of key commodities flows through just 500 companies.
Many of these companies have committed to net-zero emissions across their supply chains. But how will they get there—particularly when the biggest opportunities to reduce their carbon footprint lie at source, requiring them to work with literally millions of small producers?
Co-founded with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the world’s leading conservation organization, OpenSC is on a mission to verify, incentivize, and reward action by millions of producers at source for the benefit of people and the planet.
OpenSC’s core offering is technology to verify claims about low-carbon and responsible production in an automated, continuous way, backed by granular and immutable data. To realize the value this creates, OpenSC can also trace products along the supply chains and share their data and story with consumers, business partners, investors, and regulators.
The Opportunity
WWF’s impact venture, OpenSC, has set out to help companies verify specific claims about low-carbon, sustainable, and ethical production in an automated, continuous, and data-backed way.
Present-day systems (e.g., carbon accounting and certification schemes) typically rely entirely on manual audits—spot checks that happen from time to time. Technology can change that and take us further. For many of the most important sustainability and ethical production claims, it is possible to continuously sense relevant data and build systems that verify those claims automatically, continuously, for the whole of production, and often close to real time.
OpenSC has already developed three proven examples of an Automated Claim Verification (ACV):
- Ensuring truly deforestation-free palm oil
- Confirming the right payments to coffee farmers
- Only fishing where it is sustainable to do so
To realize the value that is created by each ACV, OpenSC can then trace products along the supply chain and share their story with consumers, business partners, investors, or regulators.
Industries
Social Impact
Regions
APAC, EMEA, North America
Technologies
Machine Learning, IoT, Blockchain, AI
Expertise
BCG Green Ventures
Milestones & Accolades
Our Approach
From Validation and Incubation, to Investment and Influence
OpenSC is the fruit of a close partnership between Digital Ventures and WWF. After initial validation and incubation sprints, the venture raised a seed round from impact investors in mid-2019 and soon gained influential customers such as the Nestlé Group, the world’s largest food and beverage company, and Austral Fisheries, part of the large seafood conglomerate Maruha Nichiro.
A World-Class Team of Tech/ Sustainability/ Business Leaders
Working across hubs in Sydney and Berlin, OpenSC’s world-class team is led by seasoned business, technology, and sustainability experts who believe in “profit for purpose.” Both WWF and Digital Ventures continue to provide unparalleled expertise to OpenSC.
Ongoing Innovation and Scalability in Supply Chain Transparency
To support this new approach to supply chain transparency, create the right automated solutions, and bring new supply chains onto the platform, OpenSC jointly innovates with customers, charging recurring platform fees that are tied to the volume of product for which they use the platform. To ensure ongoing scalability, OpenSC has developed implementation blueprints and formed third-party partnerships.
The impact realized
Multiple commodities
OpenSC already works across multiple commodities such as seafood, palm oil, coffee, and dairy
>15%
Of the sustainable catch locations of world’s legal Patagonian toothfish (Chilean sea bass) are traced and verified by OpenSC
Expanding activities
Expanding its activities in the most relevant commodity and claim spaces in order to build and continuously power solutions for some of the world’s most pressing challenges around low-carbon and sustainable production
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More venture stories
We've helped the world's leading companies invent, launch, and scale innovative businesses that leverage and reinforce their core capabilities. Explore our portfolio of pioneering businesses that are creating value for our clients.