I have spent much of 2023 talking about technology and the exciting progress we’ve seen in artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain this year. But at ZorroSign, we are committed to advancing technology while advancing sustainability—and I want to focus on those sustainability efforts today.

I have been fortunate to travel the world, attending educational institutions from Boston to New York, Toronto to Vancouver, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Singapore. This global education not only made me feel like a citizen of the world, but it also opened my eyes to both the beauty of our planet and the damage humans can do it. No matter your individual politics on climate change, we can all agree that conserving natural resources will benefit our children and the human generations to follow. As such, we have a role in sustaining natural resources as effectively as we can during our time as stewards of our home planet.

I founded ZorroSign not just to improve data democratization, privacy, and security as we move to 21^st century digital economies, but also to improve sustainability. 

Aspiring to a digital, paperless life allows all of us to potentially save trees, save water, and reduce our carbon footprints. Businesses, governments, educational institutions, organizations, and individuals who use ZorroSign go digital and so “go green”:  Creating, approving, sharing, executing, and storing digital agreements, documents, and transactions instead of printing, faxing, scanning, and shipping documents to collect signatures, then storing multiple hard copies forever in filing cabinets.

This environment savings is critically valuable—not only to the ZorroSign users who save costs and save resources, but to everyone else on Earth who benefit from those same savings!

To accelerate this value, I have committed ZorroSign to several international conservation efforts, hoping to additionally replenish those natural resources already consumed.  For example . . .

Save a Tree. Plant a Tree

Through our Save a Tree. Plant a Tree program, ZorroSign has pledged to plant a new tree on behalf of our customers every time they save 8,000 pages of copy paper.

One tree produces roughly 8,000 pages of copy paper. Studies show that by reducing the use of paper, we can realize significant environmental benefits such as conserving water, reducing carbon emissions, improving air quality, and reducing deforestation. So by using ZorroSign in human resources, financial, legal, sales, and other departments, you can not only save trees (and watch your cost of doing business go down), but you are also helping replant trees to reforest the planet.

One Tree Planted

Since 2014, the non-profit organization One Tree Planted has more than doubled the number of trees planted each year. The NPO works with partners across more than 80 countries in North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific to drive global reforestation. One Tree Planted makes it simple for anyone to help the environment by planting trees: Restoring forests, creating habitat for biodiversity, and making a positive social impact around the world.

ZorroSign has been an active partner since 2018, and we give to One Tree Planted in the hopes of inspiring other businesses to include such reforestation as part of their sustainability efforts. To learn more about this incredible program, visit OneTreePlanted.org

United Nations’ Plant for the Planet

In 2004, Wangari Maathai, a professor and member of Kenya’s Parliament, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her role as the founder of the Green Belt Movement. In 2006, Professor Maathai launched a billion-tree campaign, with the United Nations Environment Program called Plant for the Planet. That program achieved their goal and now runs the Trillion Tree Campaign!

Again, ZorroSign is a proud contributor to the Trillion Tree Campaign and invites you to learn more about this growing UN effort at Plant-for-the-Planet.org

Supply Chain Traceability and Transparency

Beyond these conservation programs, “blockchain has significant potential to support sustainability, and it may prove to be a valuable tool to help companies advance environmental goals,’ notes PwC. 

For example, blockchain technologies like ZorroSign help create more transparent and traceable supply chains. Such traceability can reduce waste and improve the sustainability of products and materials. A company might use blockchain to track the source and movement of raw materials, ensuring that they are being sourced sustainably and ethically. This enables consumers to make more informed choices about the products they buy, and encourages companies to adopt more sustainable practices.

“Blockchain will prove to be the ultimate answer to supply chain transparency,” explains Rhonda Dibachi for Forbes. “Requiring that suppliers accept APIs is one way of gaining visibility in a world where no digital architecture currently exists for it. To get beyond the self-contained bubble of the connected factory to the next step—a connected supply chain—you have to invite your suppliers in, and the blockchain offers a mechanism for the trust that will be required. That’s why blockchain will be the ultimate solution for all sorts of business that requires trust.”

“Blockchain’s role in helping the environment can go far beyond energy footprints and carbon credits as well,” adds CoinDesk in a recent article. “We expect to see an increasing number of sustainability-focused systems launching in 2023, where things like water usage or plastic creation could similarly be tracked and reported. Governments and regulators could create clear standards for what levels of environmental impact are acceptable across various industries and utilize these blockchain systems to monitor them. This would not only benefit the planet itself, but it would also streamline business processes via clear expectations for emissions. Even electrical grids can be managed via blockchains and smart contracts.”

COP28 in Dubai

Last but not least, I’d like to promote the 2023 Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — COP28.  This global event will be hosted in Dubai, United Arab Emirates this November 30th through December 12th, and I am thrilled to attend! 

COP28 UAE promises to be a milestone moment when the world will take stock of progress on the Paris Agreement—a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted at COP21 in Paris, France, December 2015 and entered into force November 2016.

To learn more about this year’s event, including opportunities to participate, visit COP28.com

Finally, I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn to discuss how your technology leadership can support sustainability and environmental conservation as well.

ZorroSign is proud to support sustainability projects around the world. In a recent effort, we are actively participating in the visionary program from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MoCCAE), whose “National Carbon Sequestration Project” will plant 100 million mangroves by 2030 across the country.

“The project is part of the strategic directions of the UAE to increase reliance on nature-based solutions in facing environmental challenges, and to enhance efforts to capture carbon dioxide to mitigate the effects of climate change and enhance adaptation capabilities,” reports Gulf News. “Mangroves can absorb and capture carbon up to four to five times greater than wild tropical rain forests, in addition to being a safe natural habitat for marine biodiversity, as 80 per cent of global fish populations depend on healthy mangrove ecosystems.”

ZorroSign is not only planting mangrove trees with the paper saved through our Save a Tree Plant a Tree program, but CEO and co-founder, Shamsh Hadi, is with his family personally planting mangroves as part of the National Carbon Sequestration Project.

“We planted 40 mangroves this weekend,” said Hadi. “It was a wonderful experience for my family, as they got to participate first-hand in this important ecological effort. We have long supported the Ismaili CIVIC Mangrove Forest project, managed by Ismaili CIVIC UAE with Major Ali Saqr Sultan Al Suweidi, founder of the Emirates Marine Environmental Group, and love seeing directly how our personal contributions can support our community.”

“Tropical mangrove forests are complex ecosystems anchored around mangrove trees that thrive in inhospitable hot, muddy and salty conditions,” adds a recent Reuters report. “They protect coastal communities against storms and floods, host diverse and threatened species and can soften climate change by capturing atmospheric carbon.”

“The UAE’s National Carbon Sequestration Project roadmap includes four activities: Evaluating mangrove planting sites, producing mangrove seeds and seedlings, a programme for planting seeds and seedlings in selected sites, and monitoring and following up on planted mangroves and the levels of carbon that will be captured,” notes Gulf News. “To enhance efforts towards achieving this ambitious goal by 2030, MoCCAE said it is working with its partners within an integrated system to implement project activities through cooperation with government and private sector institutions and international non-governmental organisations.”

Beyond the mangrove planting, ZorroSign champions sustainability efforts in partnership with One Tree Planted, the United Nations’ Plant for the Planet, and the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) hosted in Dubai, UAE this November 2023. 

To learn more about ZorroSign advancing technology while advancing sustainability, visit our Sustainability page for details!

ZorroSign Announces Growth Partnership
with Vision Tech Solutions

Strategic Reseller Partnership Brings ZorroSign’s Data Security Platform to New Markets

PHOENIX, ARIZONA, September 26, 2023 / EIN Presswire / — ZorroSign, Inc., a global leader in data security solutions built on blockchain, today announced a strategic partnership with Vision Tech Solutions in the United Arab Emirates. This partnership will unite ZorroSign’s data security platform and blockchain technologies with Vision Tech Solution’s IT infrastructure and services across the Gulf region. Initially as a reseller, Vision Tech Solutions will bring ZorroSign to new companies and new markets as the partnership deepens with integrated capabilities and technology alignment.

“We are thrilled to partner with Rajab and his team at Vision Tech,” said Shamsh Hadi, CEO and co-founder of ZorroSign. “Their customer service focus and top quality IT services map well to ZorroSign’s values and data security strengths. We are eager to see what our combined technology solutions can achieve for companies in the UAE, the larger Middle East and North Africa region, and later into Europe.”

ZorroSign was founded with a commitment to advancing technology while advancing sustainability, and ZorroSign’s goal is to help customers adopt sustainable practices and securely transform paper-based workflows into digital workflows. This conscientious approach to operations helps to decrease costs, lower resource consumption, reduce data errors, and increase productivity. Businesses, educational institutions, financial organisations, governments, IT firms, legal service providers, real estate companies, and others use ZorroSign to privately and securely manage their digital transactions.

“Vision Tech aspires to be a global leader in Information Technology, driving technological advancements and delivering sustainable solutions that improve the lives of people around the world,” added Rajab Virani, CEO at Vision Tech Solutions. “ZorroSign is an ideal technology partner for us—not only bringing a practical, scalable blockchain solution to data security and digital signatures, but doing so with an overarching commitment to sustainability.”

ZorroSign today has an extensive customer base for its data security and digital signature solutions built on blockchain in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, India, Sri Lanka, the United States, and Canada. The technology company is aggressively expanding into European markets next and seeking new strategic alliances across the EU and UK in 2023.

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About Vision Tech Solutions

Vision Tech Solutions DMCC specializes in providing companies with bespoke IT technical services, consultancies, infrastructure, and support. Headquartered in Dubai, UAE, Vision Tech Solutions unites a qualified and experienced technical and management team, whose collective experience in the IT industry spans several decades, to deliver the most proper technical applications for transformation to blockchain technologies with emphasis on the economic return. A strong research and development team working on futuristic technologies contribute to the company’s success in providing leading-edge technologies to its clients. To learn more visit visiontechsolutions.com

About ZorroSign

ZorroSign, Inc. uses blockchain for superior data privacy and security. Governments, businesses, organisations and individuals around the world trust ZorroSign to safeguard their digital documents and to provide an immutable chain of custody for their digital transactions. The company’s data security platform integrates multiple blockchains (Hyperledger Fabric and Provenance Blockchain), digital signatures, automated compliance, AI/ML form completion, document storage, patented fraud detection, user authentication and document verification, identity-as-a-service (IDaaS), and so much more. When the risk is personal and everything is on the line, Block It Down! To learn more visit zorrosign.com

Media Contacts

Rajab Ali Virani

Vision Tech Solutions DMCC

[email protected]

Michael Jones

ZorroSign, Inc.

[email protected]

Between Earth Day on April 22^nd and Arbor Day on April 28^th, ZorroSign pauses to reflect on our sustainability efforts and how we support the conservation goals behind these two key days of environmental awareness.

ZorroSign, Inc. is the first company in the world to bring blockchain technologies to digital signatures—elevating the data privacy and security of digital transactions. We are proud of this effort, as it helps people around the globe to transform the way they secure their digital data and to escape paper-based operations. By leveraging blockchain technologies for a lifetime of privacy and security with digital signatures, identities, and documents, our technology drives a “Paperless Life” for businesses, governments, and organizations:  Creating, reviewing, approving, executing, and storing digital contracts and documents on immutable blockchains instead of paper.

Further, with our Save a Tree/Plant a Tree program, ZorroSign plants a tree on behalf of our customers every time they save 8,000 pages of copy paper! One tree produces roughly 8,000 pages of copy paper and studies show that by eliminating or reducing the use of paper, we can realize significant environmental benefits such as conserving water, reducing carbon emissions, improving air quality, and slowing deforestation.

2022 saw ZorroSign complete significant creative upgrades to its SaaS platform to speed organizations’ move to sustainable digital operations:  First deploying a more scalable microservices and containers architecture in response to aggressive growth, second evolving to a multi-chain platform for further adaptability, and third updating the entire user experience with a new user interface and workflow.  These enhancements allow ZorroSign to deliver the best user experience in digital signatures and so accelerate digital operations that minimize paper consumption.

ZorroSign is the only company in the world that offers a multi-blockchain platform to secure, track, and manage digital signatures, transactions, and documentation. By using such distributed ledger technologies—built initially on a Hyperledger Fabric and recently expanded to include the Provenance Blockchain—ZorroSign’s architecture provides structural layers of protection from ransomware, malware, and phishing attacks: Foremost, by decentralizing the data set, preventing any breach from accessing the entire data set, and further by giving endpoints (or nodes) a quick path to recovery, even if they are breached or their access is ransomed. 

And ZorroSign CEO and co-founder, Shamsh Hadi, has taken the Digital City Vision for Smart Dubai launched by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum as a guiding principle for ZorroSign—continuing that effort to advance technology while also advancing sustainability. You can find Mr. Hadi’s op-ed piece on the need for new technology to also support sustainability on LinkedIn . . . as well as his recent article on how web3 technologies can advance sustainability.

ZorroSign’s innovations in sustainability have been recognized by visionary clients around the world! To learn more, visit our sustainability page or contact us to start a free 14 day trial today.

This upcoming Sunday, June 5th, is World Environment Day and the theme for this year is “Only One Earth” with a focus on “living sustainably in harmony with nature.”

Prioritizing sustainability is a key value at ZorroSign, and today we are going to give you some tips and tricks on how to incorporate sustainable practices in advance of World Environment Day!

Conserve Water

Here are a few important facts about the water on our planet from the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation:

• 97% of all water on the earth is salt water, which is not suitable for drinking.
• Only 3% of water on Earth is fresh water, and only 0.5% is available for drinking.
• The other 2.5% of fresh water is locked in ice caps, glaciers, the atmosphere, soil, or under the earth’s surface, or is too polluted for consumption.

So how does conserving water help with sustainability?

Reducing our water use/consumption reduces the energy required to process and deliver it to homes, businesses, and communities, which then helps to reduce your carbon footprint.

Grow Your Own Food

Consumers throw away $1600 of produce per year, and according to a study from the Council of Environmental Health about food additives and children’s health.

Growing your own food allows for alternative options for purchasing your food from a grocery store. Why is this significant? When you buy your food solely from grocery stores, you have to take into account that these foods sometimes travel thousands of miles before ever being consumed. This impacts not only the freshness and flavor of the food, but also adds carbon emissions and waste associated with air freight and other transportation methods into our atmosphere.

By growing your own food, you are taking a small step in helping reduce the high amounts of burning fossil fuels that are expelled into our environment as a result from importing foods from commercial farmers. You also are reducing waste from the food packaging materials such as man-made plastics and cardboard, that make the long supply-chain trip. And as an extra bonus, the food you grow will be fresher!

Growing food from your home is easier thank you think! Here are some great options for growing food from your kitchen or backyard:

• Onions
• Garlic
• Celery
• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Herbs (such as cilantro, basil, rosemary, oregano)

Go Paperless with ZorroSign

ZorroSign is committed to having a positive impact on the environment through sustainable practices. Switching from doing business using paper to digital is not only a smart business decision but it is also good for the environment.

Office paper waste is estimated to be around 12.1 trillion sheets of paper a year, with paper accounting for 50% of waste from businesses.

However, each time you use ZorroSign to digitally transact instead of printing, faxing, scanning, and shipping documents to collect signatures, you save trees and water . . . plus reduce carbon emissions while your business saves time and money!

To further live a paperless life, ZorroSign encourages all businesses to go digital and save trees. Our Save a Tree – Plant a Tree program is ZorroSign’s effort to do our part to help the environment: For every 8,000 pages of paper you save by using ZorroSign, we plant a tree on your behalf—that’s saving an existing tree and planting a new tree by going paperless with ZorroSign’s multi-chain blockchain platform.

To learn more about ZorroSign’s commitment to sustainability and environment conservation, and how we deliver greater privacy and security for digital signatures and documents, contact us today or sign up for our free trial!

In an earlier article, I briefly introduced sustainability in advancing technology—specifically urging innovators to be aware of the impact of their new technologies on the environment and human sustainability.

In advance of Earth Day 2022, I reiterate that while it is easy to laud the potential of new technologies, we must also be wary of their effects on the environment . . . specifically the depletion of natural resources which may disrupt ecological balance. This is not to say innovation must be stymied, but that the true price of innovation must be measured in more than purely economic terms.

Defining Sustainability for Business

My quick definition of sustainability—from the Brundtland Report, drafted by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987—is simply “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”

Bigger picture, the idea of sustainability is “often broken down into three pillars: economic, environmental, and social—also known informally as profits, planet, and people.” For me, new technologies tend to span all three: Driven by economic goals, but often extracting environmental and social costs.

For example, it has been a long-running criticism of bitcoin that the proof-of-work data mining required to produce coins consumes an astonishing amount of electricity. With many public blockchains used for cryptocurrencies, mining coins requires complicated mathematical processing on high-end graphic processing units (GPUs), consuming energy both for calculation processing and cooling those GPUs down under heavy load.

“Scientists from the University of Cambridge Judge Business School recently built an interactive analysis tool to calculate the real energy cost of bitcoin cryptocurrency,” explains Caroline Delbert in Popular Mechanics. “Using their energy use model, the researchers found that bitcoin mining uses more energy each year (130.00 terawatt-hours [TWh]) than the entire country of Argentina (125.03 TWh).”

Another example might emphasize social sustainability. “Social sustainability is about identifying and managing business impacts, both positive and negative, on people,” notes UN Global Compact.

Recall how Facebook’s social network technologies were taken to task by The Social Dilemma—a documentary highlighting the dangerous impact of social networking, which represents a sustainability challenge to human societies.

The film shows that while social networks’ cost is not environmental per se, social media’s “design nurtures an addiction, manipulates people’s views, emotions, and behavior, and spreads conspiracy theories and disinformation . . . [plus an] effect on mental health (including the mental health of adolescents and rising teen suicide rates).” Such social costs put existing social media in direct conflict with sustainable practices.

Balancing Innovation and Sustainability

So how can innovators build and create without jeopardizing the “ability of future generations to meet their needs”?

Such effort requires vision beyond immediate solutions and an eye for real-world consequences . . . even those completely unintended or unexpected in the deployment and adoption of new technology.

“The Industrial Revolution brought forth extraordinary gains in financial prosperity. Between 1870 and 1910, per capita income in the United States rose almost 40 percent, and the value of manufacturing output increased sevenfold. Yet rapid industrialization left in its wake darkened noontime skies, noisy and unsafe machinery, and severely compromised living conditions,” write David Austin and Molly K. Macauley in a classic article from Brookings. “Technology is a double-edged sword—one capable both of doing and undoing damage to environmental quality.”

“Technology has the ability to significantly impact the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” says Jeff Fromm in a Forbes article on sustainability and innovation. “As well as improve work/life balance, enable commerce and so much more.”

Here, environmental technologies have a chance to remedy the historical efforts of Industrial Revolution technologies that brought pollution and ecological disruption, as well as massively depleting natural resources.

“We are currently living in a period of rapid change, where technological developments are revolutionizing the way we live, at the same time as leading us further into the depths of catastrophe in the form of climate change and resource scarcity,” adds a great piece by Edinburgh Sensors. “While the impact of technology on the environment has been highly negative, the concept of environmental technology could save our planet from the harm that has been done.”

Even those technologies that simply avert environmental damage, without perhaps directly rebuilding or restoring natural resources, can have a tremendously positive effect on sustainability.

ZorroSign’s Example

Circling back to my company, ZorroSign’s platform was originally built on private, permissioned Hyperledger Fabric.

Starting with this economic pillar, we constructed a blockchain platform unlike bitcoin and the proof-of-work cryptocurrency models, instead leveraging Hyperledger Fabric as a next-generation enterprise blockchain architecture with lower electricity costs and a smaller carbon footprint. Hyperledger Fabric is a next-generation enterprise blockchain architecture “with even lower electricity costs and attendant carbon footprints,” writes Michael Barnard in a CleanTechnica report.

Hyperledger Fabric’s architecture is so completely different from the mining and broadly distributed model of bitcoin, that the enterprise blockchain can operate faster with far, far lower energy consumption rates. This combination of speed and energy-efficiency made Hyperledger Fabric the sustainable choice to launch ZorroSign’s digital platform.

For the environmental pillar, ZorroSign’s vision includes a commitment to saving trees and having a positive impact on the environment through sustainable practices. With our Save-a-Tree, Plant-a-Tree program, ZorroSign plants a tree on behalf of our customers every time they save 8,000 pages of copy paper! As one tree produces roughly 8,000 pages of copy paper, this amounts to a double incentive:  Reducing the destruction of trees via reduced paper use and increasing the number of trees as reward for reducing paper use. Again, our efforts aspire to realize significant environmental benefits such as conserving water, reducing carbon emissions, improving air quality, and reducing deforestation.

At ZorroSign, we use blockchain to help individuals, businesses, and governments to achieve a paperless life. Here we embrace the social pillar: Understanding that switching to digital records is not only a smart business decision, but it is also good for the environment and society.

Every time someone uses ZorroSign to digitally sign agreements, contracts, and other documents—instead of printing, faxing, scanning, and couriering documents to collect signatures—we all save trees, save water, and reduce carbon emissions. By moving social costs from paper consumption, logistics, and storage to digital signatures, digital archiving, and digital chains-of-custody, we advance a technology that similarly advances sustainability.

I am eager to engage technology innovators in advancing their solutions while also advancing sustainability goals!  Connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamsh-hadi/