Climate change.
Something we’ve all probably heard for the last decade, even though the alarm bells went off much earlier than that. There are many amazing companies, governments, and people who are championing the movement to reduce our carbon footprint and thus reduce the impact on our planet’s climate. Here at Rheaply, we are aiming to solve this problem through a familiar but ripe-for-change concept, reuse.
Reuse is the action of using something again, introducing it back to the economy. For the Rheaply team, we often describe reuse as a heroic effort. And yet, we’re setting out to normalize this behavior.
Why? Because reuse is an immediate answer for significantly curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the Earth at an unprecedented rate. Best of all, policy change (in most cases) isn’t required for reuse to happen at scale. Just some structure, change makers and doers.
To illustrate how important reuse is for our working world, let’s use the built environment as an example, which owns 50% of global resource extraction. Today, 170 million tons of building materials get sent to landfills each year in the U.S. alone. Of this figure, 32 million tons come from commercial renovations alone. The act of reuse reduces the need to harvest, manufacture, and transport materials. It will take four earths to sustain the level of consumption in our world, but reuse moves the needle on what today is an abysmal 8.6% circular world.
The circular economy takes a principle that we’ve all learned early on in our educational careers – reduce, reuse, and recycle – and revitalizes it.But as we’ve gotten through understanding the value of materials, products, assets, or inventory there is a much more nuanced approach to reusing, and at Rheaply we’re creating the platform that allows for reuse to happen at scale. But to get there we need a community.
The genesis of our platform is to empower organizations, governments, and people to find the best avenues to reuse with each other and for each other. Whether it be surplus inventory, spare parts or materials, our goal is to find the best possible opportunity to reuse within the organization or externally through a community roster of businesses (large & small), nonprofit organizations, refurbishers/remanufacturers, or recyclers.
As we’ve grown as a company and have been learning more and more about the applications of circularity across various industries, we’ve met some incredible organizations who have a burning passion for impact in the fight against climate change just like we do. But, there’s been a common theme as to what makes reuse operational and scalable for our global economy: it’s the people.
Introducing Rheaply’s Partner Program
Empowering organizations, governments, and people to reuse at scale is a monumental effort. Our current infrastructure and technology don’t allow for visibility into the possibilities for reuse. Proper management of resources is needed to help determine when an asset is truly at the end of its life (A low or zero depreciation value does not equal the end of life!), and avenues to properly find disposition pathways through reuse, leaving recycling for the true end of life resources.
Three main factors determine the fate of resources today – that is, whether resources are met with new owners or new landfills: (1)visibility, (2)management, and (3)disposition
These areas require more than just Rheaply to solve. It takes all the organizations and people that we have met and will meet to piece together operational and scalable processes to drive circularity for organizations, governments, and people. That is why we are officially launching Rheaply’s Partner Program!
Our partner program is built to help scale reuse opportunities in each of those three core areas. We’ve broken down the tiers below that allow for the broader community of resource-conscious and sustainability-driven organizations, and we invite you to join us in helping create a more equitable and sustainable world for the future.
Technology partners
Data is a key piece to being able to help organizations better understand how reuse could apply to them. Technology partners are key enablers in solving the visibility problem.
We’re looking to partner with organizations that help companies, governments, people with procurement, have already been procured, and are currently managing, or you provide the opportunity to easily identify resources and the associated data to make quicker decisions when it comes to reuse.
Industry partners
Impact with circularity happens at scale. For that, we need all industries to start viewing reuse as a viable option for reducing waste and their carbon footprint. Industry partners help provide opportunities and expertise in solving the management problem.
We’re looking to partner with organizations that have helped companies manage resources and have deep expertise in the industries that they serve and the processes and people that would be key in enabling reuse to happen at scale.
Community Partners
What happens when one organization no longer needs a resource? Who can be a recipient of this? Do we donate, sell, refurbish/remanufacture, or recycle? These are questions that all organizations have once they deem a resource as end-of-life (for them). Exchange alliances help create reuse opportunities outside of an organization and find pathways to streamline the disposition problem.
We’re looking to partner with organizations that help connect the dots for small businesses and nonprofit organizations, provide logistics and support, or have a vested interest in creating community reuse opportunities. Reuse can be beneficial economically and socially beyond just one organization and most importantly environmentally for communities.
Why this is important to us
Climate change is daunting and it seems like every day there is some sort of news that raises more awareness of what is happening to our beloved planet. If there is one thing that we’ve learned here at Rheaply, is that there are incredible organizations and people who are fighting every single day to make a difference within their communities, their countries, and the world just as much as we are.
With everyone focused on the same goal, our opportunities to create operational and scalable impact happen by working together. It takes a community to help shift the process, mentality, and culture around reuse.
The opportunity is there, let’s create a massive impact together.
If you are interested in learning more about Rheaply’s partner program and what that all means for you. Feel free to visit our Partnerships page or reach out to partnerships@rheaply.com
Bharani Sankar
Bharani Sankar is the Strategic Partnerships Lead at Rheaply and has extensive experience in developing, implementing, and scaling supply chain operations and procurement strategies. Prior to joining Rheaply, Bharani was a product owner for supply chain and procurement transformations at KPMG in the Product Operations Advisory group.
