Valentina Rappa

Under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, manufacturing emissions are typically assigned in full to a product's first owner under Scope 3 Purchased Goods and Services or Capital Goods, even if the product is reused, refurbished, or resold.

• Companies investing in durability and product life extension therefore have no clear way to measure or report their impact.
• Rappa points to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's 2025 insights paper responding to the GHG Protocol's revision plans, quoting its proposal to depreciate or amortize initial manufacturing emissions over a product's expected lifetime and spread them across successive owners.
• Rheaply's platform helps companies run reuse events and measure embodied carbon, but there is still no standard reporting structure for returning that positive impact to a customer as an emissions figure.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol's treatment of Scope 3 emissions, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's proposed amortization approach, and an example from Rheaply of measuring embodied carbon from reuse events.

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In one post, they walk through three rules: the EU Circular Economy Act, which aims to create demand for secondary materials and a more cohesive market for waste, including copper and lithium, while standardizing policy across member states; the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which sets design requirements for durability, repairability, and recyclability and includes Digital Product Passports, with furniture expected in the first working plan; and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which will require around 11,000 large companies to disclose circular-economy risks, opportunities, strategy, metrics, and data collection.

• Rappa cautions that CSRD mandates transparency, not action.
• Still, they argue that transparent data on circular performance and strategy matters because it forces companies to define what they measure.

The three EU rules Rappa summarizes and the Circle Economy explainer linked for detail.

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The white paper they co-authored, 'Naming It Right – The New Language of Furniture Reuse,' proposes a standardized naming convention for used furniture.

• The case is direct: you cannot reuse what you cannot identify, so clean, consistent data must come before reuse at scale.
• Rappa names the intended audience as anyone managing furniture, fixtures, and equipment across real estate, workplace, or sustainability teams, and credits coauthor Jenn Kloc, editors Rachel Zolotarsky and Sabira Lakhani, and research partners at JLL, CBRE, and One Workplace.
• The proposal targets a master-data problem that can block circular procurement.

The 'Naming It Right' white paper and its proposed naming convention for used furniture.

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In a post on five building-decarbonization projects, they single out Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, for an 82% reduction in energy use through deep retrofits, electrification to phase out fossil fuels, low-carbon material selection, and Living Building Challenge certification. They identify procurement of used materials in low-carbon buildings as the next step, pointing to the City of Seattle's work on salvage building materials as an example that addresses both waste reduction and embodied carbon.

Western Washington University's retrofit numbers, its Living Building Challenge certification, and Seattle's salvage-building-materials work.

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They say the funding will develop Cambium's AI capabilities and support engineered wood products such as cross-laminated timber as alternatives to conventional construction materials.

• The post quotes Ben Christensen, Cambium's CEO and co-founder, on expected timber demand from a growing world population by 2050, the need for lower-carbon building materials, and bringing manufacturing jobs back to local economies.
• Rappa frames the raise as part of the circular-construction supply chain and links to coverage of the funding.

Cambium's $18.5 million Series A, its waste-wood-to-building-materials process, and Christensen's quote on mass timber demand.

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They cite a Trellis Group article listing 64 sustainability certifications, including 15 for buildings, infrastructure, and landscapes, and note that certifications often carry costs not every employer will cover.

• They promote the US launch of the Supply Chain Sustainability School, a long-established UK program running since 2012 with free coursework, no tiered memberships, and no pay-to-access courses, funded by partner organizations.
• Rappa cites a launch-event talk by Josh Jacobs, who broke down more than ten pieces of built-environment legislation in ten minutes.
• They created an account the same day and plan to share the resource with colleagues at Rheaply, emphasizing access and practical instruction.

The Supply Chain Sustainability School's free US launch and Josh Jacobs's ten-minute legislation talk.

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It's aimed at sustainability reporting practitioners looking beyond traditional PDFs and adding resources to their toolkit.

• The recommendation aligns with Rappa's publicly stated career change: after working at Rheaply on circular supply chains, they moved to Google and described it as a return to sustainability reporting, with attention to the growing focus on regulated reporting in the EU.
• The through-line is that circular-economy and sustainability goals depend on reporting formats people can use and reuse, not documents that sit still.

Reporting Rewired's 2026 edition, Luke Elder's guide to Google's 2025 Environmental Report, and Rappa's stated move from Rheaply to Google's sustainability reporting work.

Rappa's move to Google shifts their daily work toward regulated sustainability reporting, while their public writing continues to cover circular-economy policy, reuse data, and built-environment projects.

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The invitation frames the problem with a figure: the global economy loses $4.5 trillion each year from wasting resources.

• Rappa targets people responsible for circularity in operations or products and tags the built environment and manufacturing.
• The format puts them to work on implementation problems one-to-one, alongside their coverage of policy and projects.

The In the Loop Discovery Sessions offer and the $4.5 trillion resource-waste figure used to frame it.

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A newcomer who reads only one post should start here: it shows the reasoning behind the rest of the writing—name the rule, explain what it fails to capture, then point to who is fixing it.

Valentina Rappa explains that the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the leading standard for corporate emissions reporting, is not structured to account for circular strategies such as reuse, refurbishment, and remanufacturing.

• Under current practice, emissions from manufacturing a product are assigned entirely to the first owner, under Scope 3 Purchased Goods and Services or Capital Goods, even when the product is reused or resold several times.
• Companies that keep products in circulation therefore get no credit for it.
• The post points to an Ellen MacArthur Foundation insights paper responding to the GHG Protocol's planned revisions.
• It proposes depreciating or amortizing initial manufacturing emissions over a product's expected lifetime, spreading the burden across multiple owners.
• Rappa adds a firsthand note from Rheaply, where the platform helps companies run reuse events and measure embodied carbon, but there is no standard reporting structure for the positive impact of extending a product's life.
• The post links the full report and cites it as a 2025 Ellen MacArthur Foundation publication.

For brands planning a campaign

This is product-content gold for a sustainability software company: it takes a dense accounting standard, shows exactly where reuse programs lose out, and connects the rule change to a measurable product feature. A campaign could use the same structure to explain regulatory shifts to buyers and position reuse measurement as a reporting capability.

Readers can see the kind of research-backed resource Valentina Rappa produces and who they build it with—useful evidence when judging whether someone can carry a content project from idea to publication.

Published on Earth Day, this white paper introduces a standardized naming convention for used furniture.

• Valentina Rappa's argument is direct: "You can't reuse what you can't identify," so clean, consistent data has to come before reuse at scale.
• The post names the intended audience as anyone managing furniture, fixtures and equipment across real estate, workplace, or sustainability teams.
• Rappa credits coauthor Jenn Kloc, editors Rachel Zolotarsky and Sabira Lakhani, and research partners at JLL, CBRE, and One Workplace, and links to the download.
• The framing is practical: the paper addresses a data problem that blocks reuse programs.

For brands planning a campaign

For a content and strategy hire, this is evidence of producing a named asset with outside partners and editors, not just posting opinion. A campaign could extend the naming-standard idea into a reusable framework, webinar, or template that software buyers can apply to their own furniture inventory.

Readers who want to understand which policies Valentina Rappa tracks and how they summarize them should open this post.

Valentina Rappa walks through three EU regulations.

• The EU Circular Economy Act aims to create demand for secondary materials and a more cohesive market for waste, particularly copper and lithium, and to standardize circular-economy policy across member states.
• Rappa notes that the goal for 2025 is simply to develop the Act.
• The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation sets design requirements for durability, repairability, and recyclability, and includes the Digital Product Passport; they single out furniture as a likely early candidate under the first working plan.
• The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive will require roughly 11,000 large companies to disclose circular-economy performance—risks, opportunities, strategies, metrics, and data collection.
• Rappa stresses that CSRD mandates transparency, not action, and still calls the disclosure meaningful.
• The post links a Circle Economy blog for more detail and looks across the Atlantic for policy with real momentum.

For brands planning a campaign

Regulatory explainers that distinguish what is already in force from what is still being drafted help buyers unsure what to prepare for. A campaign could turn this into a recurring "what changed this quarter" format, using the CSRD distinction between disclosure and obligation as a model of honest framing.

Readers can judge how Valentina Rappa handles company news without turning it into a press release.

Valentina Rappa congratulates Cambium on a $18.5 million Series A round and explains what the company does: convert waste wood into sustainable building materials, using an AI-driven platform that streamlines the wood supply chain, enables local sourcing, and reduces carbon footprints.

• The post says the investment will deepen Cambium's AI capabilities and support production of engineered wood products such as cross-laminated timber, positioned as alternatives to conventional construction materials.
• Rappa quotes Ben Christensen, Cambium's CEO and co-founder, on the timber demand expected to support a growing world population by 2050, the need for sustainable materials, and the goal of keeping wood values local.
• The post links an ESG Today article covering the raise.

For brands planning a campaign

Funding-news commentary is a low-cost recurring format that keeps a sustainability brand visible between bigger launches. The model here—one clear explanation of the technology, one founder quote, one source link—is easy to repeat across a portfolio of circular-economy companies.

It is the clearest example of how they interpret other people's projects.

Valentina Rappa highlights a Propmodo article on five projects advancing building decarbonization and singles out Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.

• The post lists three concrete points: an 82 percent reduction in energy use through deep energy retrofits, electrification to phase out fossil fuels, and a focus on low-carbon material selection that earned Living Building Challenge certification.
• Rappa names the next step they want to see: procurement of used materials in low-carbon building projects.
• They point to the City of Seattle's work on salvage building materials and its emphasis on both waste reduction and embodied carbon.
• The post calls the projects encouraging and links the article, with hashtags on building decarbonization, net zero, circular economy, and Washington state.

For brands planning a campaign

This is a template for credible project commentary: pick a real building, cite the measured result, and state what would have to change next. A software company could adapt the format to show how its tools support the missing step—tracking reused and salvaged materials for low-carbon construction.

Readers learn what they choose to promote, often a more revealing signal than what they criticize.

Valentina Rappa opens by noting that a recent Trellis Group article listed 64 sustainability certifications, 15 of them for buildings, infrastructure, and landscapes, and that these often come with costs employers will not cover.

• As an alternative, they welcome the US launch of the Supply Chain Sustainability School, an established UK program running since 2012 that is genuinely free—no tiered memberships, no pay-to-access courses, only partner organizations funding it.
• Rappa singles out a ten-minute launch talk by Josh Jacobs that clearly broke down more than ten pieces of built-environment legislation, notes that Jacobs has taught for the UK program, and hopes they will lead US courses.
• Rappa created an account the same day and says they will share the resource with colleagues at Rheaply, crediting Daniel Kietzer for the invitation and linking the Trellis article for anyone wanting formal certifications instead.

For brands planning a campaign

This is a natural partnership hook: an audience that includes construction, design, architecture, manufacturing, and facilities management, and a creator willing to promote free training. A campaign could co-brand a learning series or built-environment curriculum rather than run a standard product post.

In a post about proposed revisions to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, they explain that manufacturing emissions are typically assigned to the first owner, then highlight an Ellen MacArthur Foundation proposal to spread those emissions across a product’s expected lifetime. They connect the accounting question to practical work: reuse activity and embodied carbon can be measured, but the post says there was no standard way to report those benefits as emissions.

Explains the accounting rule behind the problem, presents a proposed alternative, then connects it to an operational example.

For brands planning a campaign

A useful fit for content about circularity metrics or sustainability reporting: the example shows why measuring reuse and reporting its emissions impact are separate challenges.

Examples: Source 1

The post names co-author Jenn Kloc, editors Rachel Zolotarsky and Sabira Lakhani, and research partners at JLL, CBRE and One Workplace. It identifies real estate, workplace and sustainability teams managing furniture, fixtures and equipment as the intended audience.

Turns a broad reuse goal into a concrete operational prerequisite: consistent information about available items.

For brands planning a campaign

Relevant to product education, workplace operations and reuse workflows where teams need to find, assess and circulate existing furniture.

Examples: Source 1

They make an important distinction about the last of these: disclosure requirements do not themselves mandate action.

Covers each policy’s purpose and status, then clarifies what disclosure does—and does not—require.

For brands planning a campaign

A strong fit for explainers aimed at businesses evaluating product data, circularity reporting or the effects of regulation on their operations.

Examples: Source 1

The post also points to electrification, low-carbon material selection and Living Building Challenge certification, then asks how construction can make greater use of salvaged materials while addressing embodied carbon.

Selects one project from a wider roundup, names its reported measures and identifies a next step for the sector.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful for built-environment content connecting operational energy improvements with material choices, salvage and embodied-carbon considerations.

Examples: Source 1

The post highlights Luke Elder’s breakdown of ways to engage with Google’s 2025 Environmental Report, presenting it as a practical addition to a practitioner’s toolkit.

Points readers to a specific resource and explains its practical use for reporting professionals.

For brands planning a campaign

A fit for practitioner-facing content on reporting formats and how organizations can make sustainability information easier to navigate and use.

Examples: Source 1

They later say they will miss the Rheaply team as they start a new role at Google.

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The posts share Rappa’s practical, standards-aware register and address people who need to make the numbers usable.

The focus is travel and transport emissions and the data systems used to measure them, not circular-economy reuse, product lifetimes, or building materials. Rappa examines how a product’s manufacturing emissions should be allocated across owners; Brown looks at how an institution’s travel footprint can be measured and reduced.

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Both write for practitioners translating frameworks into day-to-day decisions.

Hobson focuses on freight, logistics, and transport emissions reporting, including ISO 14083 as an emerging common methodology.

• The audience is logistics service providers, forwarders, and carriers.
• Rappa focuses on the circular economy and built environment, including reuse events, furniture data standards, retrofits, and low-carbon construction materials.

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Like Rappa, the posts examine how a sector agrees on what to count and how to document progress.

The focus is advertising and media emissions, including campaign work, production levies, and media measurement, rather than reuse, product life extension, or construction materials. The audience is marketers, agencies, and advertisers, not circular-economy and built-environment teams.

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In a post about higher education, Brown describes travel emissions as fragmented across bookings, expenses, departments and policies, then focuses on turning the data into practical reduction opportunities.

• That makes Brown a closer fit than Rappa for a travel-reporting product aimed at universities and colleges.
• Read Brown’s post on travel and higher education.

Brown’s posts focus on travel and organisational emissions decisions, not reuse, refurbishment or circular materials.

• For a product focused on extending the life of furniture or other assets, Rappa’s work is more directly relevant.
• See Brown’s post on the UN Global Compact summit.

Hobson connects proposed Scope 3 reporting changes with ISO 14083, arguing that logistics providers can distinguish themselves by offering primary emissions data rather than relying on averages.

• A separate post argues that procurement can stall decarbonisation when decisions focus only on lowest cost.
• Read Hobson’s post on logistics emissions reporting.

Hobson’s examples centre on freight operators, transport methodology and procurement—not product reuse or the built environment.

• For a campaign about circularity in furniture or other durable goods, Rappa offers the closer subject match.
• Read Hobson’s reflections on Smart Freight Centre Week.

One post contrasts marketing that delivers measurable impact with claims that rely on slogans, citing figures from a Vauxhall electric-vehicle campaign; another describes Meta’s sustainability reporting and its work on a media-emissions framework.

• These examples give an advertising-emissions brief a direct connection to the industry’s campaigns and reporting.
• Read Isabelle Q.’s post on the Ad Net Zero Awards.

These posts address advertising, media and campaign emissions, not circular economy or product-life extension.

• Rappa is the stronger match for a brief about reuse systems, furniture data or accounting for the impact of keeping products in use.
• Read Isabelle Q.’s post on Meta’s sustainability report.