We did it!
After just 2 years in the game, reboxed® is officially a B Corp. We’re joining over 4,000 organisations around the world in shaking things up and using business as a force for good.
To certify as a B Corp or B Corporation, businesses are verified by the B Lab to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability.
As a challenger brand committed to disrupting the tech industry through our circular business model - rebox, rehome, repeat, it means really means so much for us to be recognised for our efforts.
To bring this achievement to life, we teamed up with spoken-word artist Sami Switch to bring you 'Ripples', a spoken word performance that captures what being a B Corp means to us. Check it out:
Ripples - a spoken word by Sami Switch x reboxed
Our Belief in Action
Consumer electronics is one of the world’s most polluting industries. That’s because it’s a linear system: buy it, bin it, buy it, bin it. It’s a throwaway approach that encourages and rewards people to upgrade long before they actually need to – and little to no incentives to re-sell.
Millions of mobiles end up going to waste every year -– lying unloved in drawers long before their time, before eventually ending up in landfill. And every single one of those devices has taken precious earthly materials to create, at great cost to the environment and local communities. Just one iPhone X will create 79kg of CO2 in its lifetime, roughly the same as burning 9 gallons of petrol. And 80% of those emissions happen before it’s even left the factory.
We believe that changing things up starts with circularity, but there's so much more we can do too. At reboxed, we’re committed to going above and beyond to give back to people and the planet - to leave this world a better place than we found it.
What we’ve been up to
Reduce
Every time we rebox a phone, we’re already helping reduce both waste and carbon. But we also plant trees with our partners at Ecologi to help offset the lifetime CO2 impact of every device we rehome. We’ve proudly planted over 16,498 trees and support carbon offsetting projects from preserving the Amazonian rainforest, producing energy from waste rice husks in India to powering wind projects in Mexico.
Rehome
Our ‘Rehome Your Phone’ initiative with UK charity Hubbub aims to help the 7 million people in the UK without internet access, get connected. Hubbub has already rehomed almost 10,000 smartphones, but with 28 million more going unsused in people’s homes, there’s lots we can do to get more people digitally connected.
We’re starting this commitment by donating phones to non-profit organisation, The Worldwide Tribe. Working closely with founder, Jaz’Ohara, this project aims to connect the 68 million people who are currently displaced.
Repair
We work closely with The Restart Project - a people-powered social enterprise that aims to fix the throwaway, consumerist model of electronics consumption.
Together we’re campaigning for the #righttorepair movement which is proposed legislation that would provide the practical means for electronic equipment governed to repair their devices.
Recycle
We’d love to rehome every phone, but some can’t be saved. If a phone can’t be reboxed, we’ll safely wipe all the data from it and send it to our recycling partner, so we can save more precious materials and take less from the earth.
On top of that, our packaging is made from recycled SGS approved-paper, wherever possible. And our phone case is 100% biodegradable, saving 1kg of plastic for every 10 phones we sell.
Reuse
At reboxed, we don’t want you to buy more. We want you to buy less. We want to help you make better choices and keep your device for two, three, or even five years before you need a new model.
So when you’re well and truly ready for an upgrade, we guarantee to buy yours back off you for the best price and rehome it again. You can even re-use the same box we sent it in to return it.
“We’re incredibly proud of this achievement but by no means does our commitment stop here - this is just the start. Impact has been in our DNA from day one and we are going to start by refreshing our 5-point plant to a greener future, and tackling our internal carbon footprint to drive to become a positive carbon business.” Phil Kemish co-founder.
And we don’t pretend to have all the answers. We want to collaborate with other like-minded partners to create positive, meaningful change too. So if you’ve got any ideas around how we can improve, send us a dm @reboxed
