Rheaply acquires United States Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Materials Marketplace

Rheaply has acquired 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 cost savings, energy savings, and create new jobs and business opportunities.

Up to 40 percent of emissions come from the manufacturing, construction, and demolition of materials within the built environment. Materials of which are the main products listed and have found reuse through the Materials Marketplace. Rheaply's integration of its technology platform will help 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," says Andy Magan, executive director at US BCSD.

While the 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 the company, avoiding both the long wait times associated with global supply chain disruptions and disposing of materials in usable condition. With the acquisition of the Materials Marketplace, the waste streams available for reuse and exchange are higher when factoring in 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 percent and by 72 percent year over year net revenue.

Materials Marketplace currently operates in Texas, Tennessee, Ohio, Ontario, Michigan, and Washington, and the acquisition will lead to rapid expansion. Rheaply is currently piloting a similar waste and resource management program in San Francisco.

Since its inception, the Materials Marketplace has diverted 9,200 tons of waste from landfills.

With this acquisition and additional product advancements, Rheaply plans to develop next-generation technology, making asset reuse more accessible to organizations of all shapes and sizes. Additionally, Rheaply recently introduced a tool that allows users to view the estimated embodied carbon avoided by reusing items, contextualizing the environmental benefit in hard data.

With Material Marketplace's reputation and work in various cities and states, Rheaply will come closer to offering its reuse platform in 50 cities in the United States by the beginning of 2024.

The acquisition is inclusive of mutual success factors to incentivize continued growth and scale of the program. The terms of the deal are not disclosed.