ROKBOX Sustainability Statement 2025

The world is facing a series of linked environmental crises. In October 2022, the UN warned that the world’s governments are not yet on track to keep global heating below 1.5 degrees, and the window for action is rapidly closing. We are already seeing the impacts of existing warming with devastating droughts, storms and floods across the world. Related crises include collapsing biodiversity, dangerous levels of air pollution, and plastic contamination in our rivers and oceans. Without urgent action from across society, these problems will rapidly escalate.

The art world has an important role to play. Arts organisations – particularly in the Global North – have a disproportionately large impact on the environment, mainly due to a great deal of international travel, arts shipping, and high use of energy and materials. We need to act urgently to reduce these impacts in line with what science is telling us. As arts organisations, we also have an opportunity to use our public platform and cultural influence to set a positive example, encouraging and supporting others to take action and helping shift the public debate.

The art world has committed publicly to reducing 50% of carbon emissions by 2030 in line with the goals of COP26 and the Paris Agreement. The days of throwing art packaging away are coming to an end. At ROKBOX, our values and mission are to provide sustainable art crating options to enable the art world to ship art safely and cost-effectively, whilst minimising the impact on the environment.

At ROKBOX, our values and mission are to redefine fine art shipping by eradicating packaging waste and lowering carbon emissions and costs.

Optimised to their full potential, the carbon footprint of a ROKBOX crate is 90% less than a single-use wooden crate. Read more in our LifeCycle Analysis. 

As an organisation, our main direct environmental impacts include manufacture and production, along with shipment of products in our sales and rental system. We have committed to tackling these impacts by:

• Joining the Gallery Climate Coalition, and pledging to at least halve our carbon emissions by 2030, from a 2019 baseline.
• Regularly calculating the carbon footprint of our operations, to track progress towards this target.
• Setting specific targets for the major parts of our footprint, including:
  • Ensuring the majority of our international shipping is carried out by sea, rail or road rather than air by 2028. 
  • Using only low or zero emissions vehicles for local deliveries by 2025.
• The actions we are taking to meet these targets include:
  • Speaking to our shippers about alternatives to air freight.
  • Encouraging clients to choose to ship via sea freight over air freight.
  • Reviewing our staff travel policies and practices, and planning our attendance at international events to reduce the need for air travel.
  • Working with other GCC members on projects to help develop more sustainable packaging, transport and energy saving solutions for the whole sector.
  • Maintaining a Green Team with representatives from different parts of the organisation, that meets to track progress on all of these targets and actions at least once a month.

Following guidance from the Gallery Climate Coalition we are implementing a new opt-out policy for carbon offsetting on all sales orders.

From Spring 2025 we will encourage a standardised donation of £50 to ClientEarth per tonne of carbon emitted in each sales order, giving the customer  freedom to opt-out. For our rental orders, we donate £1 per rental to ClientEarth. These donations will be spent on supporting frontline climate solutions around the world that are making a difference right now. We aim to act in line with the principles of climate justice, recognising the connections between the climate crisis and other global injustices. We want our environmental actions to support – rather than undermine or ignore – the needs of people on the frontlines of marginalisation and injustice.

We have set these targets and are acting in the knowledge that still have a great deal to do and much to learn. We welcome feedback from our clients on this environmental statement, our targets, and our action plans.