The current climate crisis is real, and we are witnessing the effects across the world every day. As laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement, countries across the world must take urgent action to achieve net zero emissions by 2050—a lofty goal, but an essential one to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
But it’s going to take more than just action and new policies from governments across the world to achieve the Agreement’s targets. Individuals and businesses alike must all take part, using every tool at their disposal to reduce and eventually neutralize their carbon footprint. While many industries have taken action and made sustainability a priority, the art world has been slow to act. ARTA is committed to being a thought leader in pushing the art industry to take an honest look at current business practices, and take meaningful action to reduce its carbon footprint.
As part of this commitment, we have released a white paper with the goal of sharing data that will help our clients estimate their emissions from art shipping specifically. We also aim to provide educational information that will encourage our clients, partners, and colleagues to become increasingly focused on environmentally-conscious solutions moving forward. You can download the white paper here.
Where we are today and plans for the future:
Over the next few years, our goals at ARTA will be to both emit less CO2 into the air (emissions reduction) and to invest in removing existing CO2 from the air (carbon removal). We have engaged a third party auditor to calculate the carbon footprint from all shipments booked through ARTA. In the coming months, we will present our thesis on carbon removal and our plans to help our clients reduce their footprint. As a logistics provider, we hope not only to provide our clients with information and data to help them assess and reduce their environmental impact from shipping, but also to provide a seamless and efficient way to neutralize the CO2 that is emitted from each shipment.
We are simultaneously assessing our carbon footprint across all areas of our business operations and looking for opportunities to make measurable changes in our overall emissions. We were proud to identify areas where we are already ahead. Firstly, as ARTA has worked to automate shipping and logistics for the art industry and streamline processes by bringing everything online, we have eliminated the need for printing and keeping paper records related to shipping. All relevant documentation is stored in a single dashboard for our clients for easy reference. Secondly, our servers—google cloud and AWS —operate on mostly renewable energy. Lastly, our energy consumption is minimal: prior to the pandemic we worked out of a small office space, and now our team is fully remote with no immediate plans to return to an office. While the reduction in emissions from commuting was a result of the pandemic, we have realized that our business can operate at the same efficiency as we did when in an office, so are debating what future office needs actually entail. When the time comes to return to an office in some capacity, we will keep sustainability top of mind.
We look forward to helping our clients reduce their own emissions and contribute to carbon removal.
