Material Bank, the world’s largest marketplace for architectural, design and construction materials, has recently announced its commitment to The Climate Pledge. By signing The Climate Pledge, the company announces that it is taking its commitment to sustainability one step further, going beyond industry standards to place climate health and decarbonization as the top priority.
Since its inception, the company has had sustainability built into its core, with the platform itself designed originally to reduce the massive amounts of waste created during the sampling process. Today, members of Material Bank can search from more than 450+ brands on a single website, being able to receive all materials in a single box that can then be shipped back to the facility for reuse or recycling.
“We are thrilled to be part of this incredibly important initiative which challenges companies to go beyond the status-quo and act now,” said Material Bank Founder & CEO, Adam I. Sandow. “The gravity of climate change is something we cannot ignore, and we hope our bold commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 will inspire the larger design community to continue to reevaluate and innovate when it comes to environmental impact.”
Detailing Material Bank’s Climate Pledge Commitment
Co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019, The Climate Pledge is a commitment by companies to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040—a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement’s goal of 2050.
To achieve this, signatories to The Climate Pledge agree to:
- Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis
- Implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through real business changes and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy, materials reductions, and other carbon emission elimination strategies
- Neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent, and socially-beneficial offsets to achieve net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040
Material Bank has also announced they will be taking their pledge a step further by reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 38% by 2030, down from its values in 2021.
This follows previous initiatives made by the company, such as those back in 2020, which sought to offset 100% of all carbon emissions from sample shipments. To date, this initiative has offset more than 2.6K metric tons of CO2e. In that same year, the company launched its Carbon Impact Program, a free initiative that provides firms with custom search filters, sustainable sampling metrics and powerful digital tools to more easily search and sample sustainable materials.
Prior to the announcement, Rebecca Best, SVP of Sustainability at Material Bank had spoken with DesignWell about the company’s approach to sustainability as well.