The blockchain is gaining more inroads into conventional use cases that will further provide legitimacy to the most innovative technology of recent times. In a recent development, Ethereum focused startup incubator Consensys is teaming up with U.S. think-tank New America, American apparel company Levi Strauss & Co and Harvard University’s public health graduate school.
The Chan School of Public Health in an initiative that will provide additional transparency into the health and working conditions of Levi Strauss & Co factory workers in Mexico. The initiative is aimed at augmenting the already established practice of using outside audit firms to inspect the working conditions in these factories.
The system is going to be built based on the Ethereum blockchain to relay survey feedback from workers of three factories in Mexico. In total, the survey is expected to reach out to about 5,000 factory workers in the three factories.
The survey, focused on “sustainability and health,” has been developed by Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health. According to an announcement from the parties made on Thursday 24th, January, the initiative is fully sponsored through a grant from the U.S. State Department.
Joseph Lubin, the founder of ConsenSys and Co-Founder of Ethereum, was the first to tweet about this partnership. According to Lubin, the goal of this initiative is to eventually replace the need for outside auditors in similar use cases.
The initiative saves factories money while increasing transparency which should then help decision makers gain invaluable insight into the health and working conditions of workers at their factories. The use of the blockchain, and in this case Ethereum’s immutable ledger, would ensure that all submitted feedback from the survey would not be tampered with.
