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At the London ice cream shop Ben & Jerry’s opened last month, the company kicked off a blockchain initiative to let customers offset their carbon footprint. Ben & Jerry’s partnered with the Poseidon Foundation to calculate the environmental impact generated from producing and purchasing a scoop of ice cream. While Ben & Jerry’s have pledged to purchase carbon credits to offset the negative impact of each scoop, customers are also invited to offset their purchase as well by donating an additional penny. By the end of the one-month pilot, Londoners had helped save 1,000 trees, covering the equivalent of 77 tennis courts.

Carbon credits have been around for years, and many B2C companies have purchased them to offset their environmental impact. But this has taken place at the corporate level. This initiative from Ben & Jerry’s is the first to enable customers to directly offset the environmental impact of a specific purchase. The key enabling factor here is that using the blockchain enables carbon credits to be bought in tiny fractions, with transactions processed reliably and at a disruptively feasible cost. Even when applied to a single scoop of ice cream!

Your challenge: use this example to trigger a useful blockchain conversation with your colleagues (not just “how can we jump on this bandwagon?!” 😉) Instead, consider how new levels of accountability will empower your customers to seamlessly and tangibly engage with issues that have previously been opaque and out-of-reach.