Furniture and the road to net zero

During Clerkenwell OPEN, we were delighted to have our Head of Sustainability, Lucy Arndt, participate in a presentation and discussion on ‘Furniture and the road to net zero’ at Modus, alongside their Sustainability Manger, Lucy Crane, which was hosted by Design Insider Editor, Alys Bryan.

The event started with Lucy Crane giving the perspective from a furniture manufacturer, really digging into where carbon emissions come from in the production process, how much carbon is in various types of furniture and the innovation that Modus has been doing re-engineer some of their products to bring down the carbon impact. This includes work on their Edge sofa range to change the standard foam to using natural coconut fibres.

Our Head of Sustainability, Lucy Arndt, then went on to discuss net zero and how companies can start to build a pathway towards it. Net zero means a 90% reduction in absolute emissions by 2050; to date about 88% of global emissions and 90% of the global economy is covered by net zero commitments. Lucy showed an example of a net zero pathway, with incremental emissions reductions year on year. Some of the key suggestions for building this pathway for projects were:

- The starting point is data

- Materiality: the importance of understanding where the most significant climate impacts come from

- In the absence of data, there are key characteristics of furniture to look out for which have a lower impact on the climate

If you’d like to know more about the details of this conversation, the full transcript and slides from the presentation are available on Design Insider, check it out here.

If you are interested in understanding the carbon footprint of your next project or have a net zero target, get in touch and we’d be delighted to discuss how we can help you on this journey.