Rheaply, the resource exchange platform enabling circularity for every business through management, reuse, and upcycling of physical assets, announced its acquisition of The United States Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Materials Marketplace™ (US BCSD). Rheaply will leverage the Materials Marketplace’s network of 2,200 partners and expertise in the upcycling of building materials, significantly improving the company’s efforts to divert building waste from landfills, as well as generate significant cost savings, energy savings, and create new jobs and business opportunities. Up to 40% of emissions come from the manufacturing, construction, and demolition of materials within our built environment, materials of which are the main products listed and have found reuse through The Materials Marketplace™. Rheaply’s integration of their technology platform will elevate the circular economy to transform how building and manufacturing waste is recovered and reused, where one organization’s hard-to-recycle waste and byproducts becomes another organization’s raw material for furnishings, new development projects and product fabrication.
“It’s been exciting to see how much the marketplace has accomplished since the days when company reps were sitting around tables poring over spreadsheets of inputs and outputs. The software that’s automating those connections now needs the kind of expertise that a company like Rheaply can offer to take it to the next level,” said Andrew Mangan Founder and Former Executive Director, US BCSD. While Materials Marketplace™ focuses on upcycling building materials waste from small businesses, and government agencies (including cities and local non-profit organizations), Rheaply brings circularity to furniture, fixtures and equipment for large corporations like Google, Target, AbbVie, and Nicor, offering a solution to sustainable procurement and investment recovery through a combination of internal and external reuse. Rheaply’s platform is designed to help organizations locate what they need from other divisions of their company, avoiding both the long wait times associated with global supply chain disruptions and disposing of materials in perfect, usable condition. With the acquisition of the Materials Marketplace™, the waste streams available for reuse and exchange are exponentially higher when factoring construction surplus, deconstructed materials and by-products from manufacturing operations.
To date, over 50,000 items with a value of $19 million have been upcycled through the platform, diverting more than 20 metric tons of waste from landfills. Since Q2 2021, the company’s growth is up 185% and by 72% year over year net revenue. “We are very grateful that Andy and the US BCSD have entrusted us with building on what they’ve created with the Materials Marketplace so far. With around 20% of all US waste headed to landfill coming from commercial construction projects, we must think about the next wave of buildings to be built with the things that we already have above ground and the things that are already in our community. It makes clear economic sense, empowering reuse creates 20-30 more jobs than traditional waste management solutions such as landfill or even recycling. If those jobs can actually make our communities more self-reliant on their own supply chains and not global supply chains, and if we can also do that by reducing the things that go to landfill, it’s at least a triple bottomline win,” said Rheaply Founder and CEO Garry Cooper.