Depop achieves climate-neutral certification

Depop, the community-powered marketplace app to buy and sell fashion, has been certified as a climate-neutral company by leading climate solutions provider South Pole.

In February, the fashion marketplace unveiled a new sustainable fashion plan to reshape fashion consumption, which included becoming a climate-neutral company by the end of 2021.

In a statement, Depop states that it has successfully offset all material sources of scope 1-3 greenhouse gas emissions, with the South Pole certificate for 2021 covering 100 percent of material scope 1-3 emissions during 2020.

Depop has also been retroactively offsetting greenhouse gas emissions from shipping since January 2020, which has now been expanded to cover the rest of its material measured emissions, including its offices and utilities, IT equipment and cloud services, and employees’ travel and work from home activities.

Justine Porterie, global head of sustainability at Depop, said: “Becoming climate neutral is an important step on our journey towards making Depop actively kinder to people and the planet. We believe in setting ambitious goals and focusing our efforts on delivering results and iterating fast - so now that we’ve achieved this milestone, we will shift our focus towards net zero. We look forward to working with Tech Zero on the next leg of our climate journey.”

Fashion marketplace Depop certified as a climate-neutral company

By partnering with South Pole, Depop worked to quantify and compensate for all of its 2020 measured emissions by funding two global climate action projects in Zimbabwe and Turkey. The Kariba Forest Protection project in Zimbabwe prevents more than 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere by preventing deforestation and land degradation of nearly 785,000 hectares of forest.

While the Dora-II Geothermal project, located in Turkey, one of the world’s top producers of cotton and a major supplier of the fashion industry, aims to reduce the country’s reliance on imported fossil fuels through the financing of a geothermal power plant near Izmir, in the Aegean region.

Bethan Halls, regional director at South Pole, added: “Depop already encourages sustainable consumer behaviour and achieved climate neutrality for its shipping emissions in 2020. It is further amplifying its climate leadership efforts by scaling up this achievement to now compensate for its scope 1 - 3 emissions. We are pleased to award Depop South Pole’s climate neutral company label for 2021.”

In addition, this month Depop also became a member of the Tech Zero Taskforce, a group of tech companies of all sizes around the world who are committed to fighting the climate crisis. Tech Zero is an official partner to the UN Race to Zero and is backed by the UK Government. As a member company, Depop will continue to measure scope 1-3 emissions and plans to expand the boundaries of its scope 3 emissions to include packaging and associated end user’s energy use.