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limited efficiency and require larger storage capacity,
leading to poor performance and much higher energy
costs. The blockchain technology can be a great solu-
tion to be used in some situations but it certainly is not
the best solution to be used in all of them. Pedersen et
al. propose a set of ten steps to help in deciding if the
blockchain technology is the best option to a specific
problem or not, and if so, what kind of blockchain is
a better fit (Pedersen et al., 2019).
In (Deloitte, 2019), Deloitte performed a survey
about integrating blockchain into their business oper-
ations. The study involved around 1,000 big compa-
nies from 12 countries from 4 continents. This sur-
vey, from 2019, concluded that 34% already had a
blockchain system in production and 41% expected
to implement a blockchain application within the next
12 months. The survey concludes that “53% of re-
spondents say that blockchain technology has become
a critical priority for their organizations”. In compar-
ison to the survey previously performed in 2018, the
authors notice a 10-point increase in 2019 over 2018.
Value chain integration and digitization is becom-
ing increasingly important, not only for practical rea-
sons, but also for reasons of transparency and secu-
rity (Cruz and da Cruz, 2019). Korpela et al. research
the supply chain integration and the role played by
blockchain technology in digital supply chain trans-
formations. According to the authors, value chain in-
tegration has advantages for everyone involved: sup-
pliers, customers, intermediaries, etc. The authors
present several advantages such as: increase value
chain efficiency; ease of the communication between
chain operators; possibility of tracing the product
since the beginning of the chain; decreased need for
human intervention (automatic data collection) reduc-
ing human error, etc.(Korpela et al., 2017).
In (Saberi et al., 2019), the authors identify some
strengths of the use of blockchain for the integration
of the value chain. Blockchain technology can sup-
port data collection, storage, and management, thus
enabling support for most of the value/supply chains
information. Saberi et al. focus their attention mainly
on the use of blockchain in sustainable supply chains.
According to the authors, blockchain can be used
to: ensure that green products are environmentally
friendly; trace the carbon footprint of a product; im-
prove recycling; improve emission trading schemes
efficacy; etc. (Saberi et al., 2019).
Several authors are using blockchain for traceabil-
ity in food supply chains, as is the case of (Biswas
et al., 2017), (Tan et al., 2019), (Tian, 2017), (Galvez
et al., 2018), (Caro et al., 2018) and others.
Biswas et al. propose a blockchain-based wine
supply chain to record detailed information in order
to trace the origin, production and purchase history of
the wine. The authors designed and implemented a
blockchain with five entities (one entity for each wine
chain operator) (Biswas et al., 2017). Three of the en-
tities were designed as the miners and all entities in
the chain generate their own blocks containing trans-
actions. These transactions are verified by the miners
before being added in the chain (Biswas et al., 2017).
Feng Tian proposes a decentralized system based
on IoT and blockchain technology to support trace-
ability in food supply chain (Tian, 2017). The au-
thor identifies a set of advantages and disadvantages
of blockchain databases and proposed a new concept,
named as BigChainDB, by combining the benefits
of distributed databases and blockchain. This way
the author deals with blockchain problems like low
throughput, high latency and scalability (Tian, 2017).
In Galvez et al. the authors main goal is to study
the use of blockchain to store data from chemical
analysis to ensure transparency in food supply chain,
avoiding food falsification or adulteration. The au-
thors study the potential of blockchain technology for
assuring traceability and authenticity in the food sup-
ply chain (Galvez et al., 2018). The authors conclude
that the use of blockchain has many advantages in
traceability, such as allowing all stakeholders to check
the entire history and current location of a product;
assures geographic biological origin by collecting in-
formation from sensors and store it directly into the
blockchain(Galvez et al., 2018)..
Caro et al. propose a decentralized solution for
agri-Food supply chain management and traceability
based on blockchain. The presented solution is able
to integrate data produced and consumed by IoT de-
vices. The authors used Ethereum and Hyperledger
Sawtooth blockchains (Caro et al., 2018).
Luu et al. research the security problems of exe-
cuting smart contracts on the Ethereum platform. The
authors identify several vulnerabilities and propose
solutions to overcome them and make contracts more
secure (Luu et al., 2016). They also propose a tool
to identify and alert for potential security flaws when
coding smart contracts (Luu et al., 2016).
3 THE CARBON FOOTPRINT
TRACEABILITY PLATFORM
CONCEPTUALIZATION
Informed people tend to make better, or more con-
scious, choices when presented with various alterna-
tives as long as there is no personal detriment. The
best way to encourage consumers to choose products
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