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Friday, November 8, 2024

Sustainable Design Solutions with Sophia Major, Founder of IGOLO

IGOLO is an online marketplace for sustainable home renovation and design, it’s a one-stop-shop that houses sustainable brands, products, materials, and services.

Founded by Sophia Major, a University of Manchester graduate and architectural designer, IGOLO seeks to shift public shopping habits while influencing change in the building industry. Sophia is working towards the start-up becoming the sustainability tool choice for building professionals, homeowners, and renovators across the UK. 

Among IGOLO’s eco-friendly brands are Goldfinger, Caracara Collective, Jott Studio and TŶ SYML. Each item listed on IGOLO has been rigorously assessed to ensure that it meets the top standards in social, environmental, and health practices.

Puretree Cork Cork Wall Tiles available on IGOLO

Here, Sophia talks disrupting the industry, what IGOLO represents, and future plans to influence change for good.

Tell us about your design background and how IGOLO got started.

I am an architectural designer with several years of experience working on residential projects across the UK. I have found that sustainability often falls to the bottom of the priority list with home renovation or design, due to the challenges of navigating an industry that is full of complex and conflicting information. I wanted to create a tool for homeowners and professionals across the UK – making sustainable homes the easier and more convenient choice for many. In 2021 I won the Venture Further competition in the environmental category and reached the semi-finals of the TiE University Global Pitch Competition 2022 which provided me with mentoring support and funding towards the business.

What does IGOLO represent as a brand and how are you innovating within the online marketplace?

IGOLO – a derivative of Igloo, a home made from the ground up – represents the brands that are innovating with natural materials, not only reconnecting our interiors with nature but creating products that are biodegradable and do not end up in landfill or for incineration. With our increasing use of toxic materials such as the VOCs found in our paints, flooring and furniture, we are not only destroying the planet but the indoor air quality of our home – these VOCs can have lasting impacts on our health.

We have a great, growing selection of bio-materials such as lampshades made from seaweed (Ty SYml) or dried oranges (Caracara Collective), insulation made from sisal and recycled wool (Sisaltech), and insulation blocks made from hemp (Hemspan). Some of our great furniture brands also only use natural materials such as wool, bamboo, natural latex and coir (Oragi).

TÅ· Syml ALGĂ‚U lampshade available on IGOLO

IGOLO promotes sustainable home renovation products by making it easier and more convenient to source them. Our USP is all about raising education and awareness around the topic and to combat greenwashing – an increasingly frustrating and prevalent issue where brands use marketing as a tool to represent themselves as sustainable when actually they are not.

It is difficult for people to see past the brands’ marketing. It takes a lot of effort to research every industry, supply chain, ingredients and materials to understand whether a product or brand is sustainable. At IGOLO, our mission is to make the selection process easier and simpler, by doing the research for people and driving transparency between brand and end consumer.

Caracara Collective Pine Needles & Reed Lampshade available on IGOLO

Furthermore, we want to give homeowners the opportunity to take control over their own renovation. During Covid we saw a spike in DIY and home renovation projects across the country as more people were spending time at home. During lockdown, we had more time to contemplate how we want to live and work at home, and what our impact is on the environment. One of the increasing trends on social media during this time was in upcycling and renovation projects as well as our love for biophilia – the more house plants the better! There was an increasing demand for conscious consumerism. One of our more recent product additions to the platform are our sustainable house plants delivered in natural, coconut coir pots (Foli8). It is surprising that plastic plays such a crucial role in the horticultural industry but it has become so normal. The brands we represent are innovative. They are changing the way we see our products, how we live and feel, and improve our health, and that of the planet.

What do you see as the biggest challenge for the building industry when it comes to sustainability?


As previously mentioned, greenwashing, transparency and understanding the true sustainability of a product is one of the greatest challenges.  The word ‘Sustainability’ is used in every company’s vocabulary but what does it mean and how far does a brand or product go to be sustainable? Some products are labelled as ‘eco’ but only contain 5-10% recycled content which has very little impact on the sustainability of the product. We must look towards circularity – products and materials that are biodegradable or can be 100% disassembled and recycled into a brand new product. Essentially, achieving a closed loop system where waste does not exist. It requires not only innovation in manufacturing and materials but brands must offer take-back schemes and repair services to lengthen the lifespan of their products. There are very few companies that have achieved this due to its complexity and challenge to make it financially viable in our ‘take, make, waste’ economy.

Sophia Major is working towards IGOLO becoming the sustainability tool choice for building professionals, homeowners, and renovators across the UK.

When we think of a sustainable building we often look to energy efficiency and renewable energies. But to achieve this, we also have to look at the embodied carbon of the products and materials we use to build and renovate with. In the construction industry, design professionals often turn to products that have obtained an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) which transparently addresses the environmental impact (in terms of carbon) of any product or material over its lifetime and use this information to compare products in order to select the most sustainable option. But not everyone can read an EPD and understand the numbers of carbon counting – we need to simplify it to not only help industry professionals to understand the sustainability of the product but consumers too.

How do you tackle issues surrounding sustainability in your own processes at IGOLO?

At IGOLO, our selection process plays an important role of achieving a sustainable marketplace:

  • Mostly taking on UK based brands to localise our supply chain
  • To ship to mainland GB only to reduce transport emissions.
  • Discourage the use of single use plastic in packaging
  • Encourage our brands to offer repair services and product warranties to lengthen the lifespan of their products.
  • Preference for handmade products using more traditional methods such as woodworking
  • Preference for made to order items to reduce the risk of stock waste
  • Providing a spotlight for small, independent businesses

What are you focused on for 2023?

The goal for IGOLO is to become the leading tool for sustainable design across the UK and to actively have an impact on our new and existing housing stock by helping homeowners and professionals source sustainable materials & products.

We launched our first MVP this August and now we would like to focus on developing the marketplace by growing our product collections across all categories from furniture to building materials. We are also working on how we can push these products into the B2B space by offering a platform that helps architects and designers to source more sustainable products with trade discounts.

It is essential that we continue to develop our assessment criteria and use carbon counting data to back up our sustainability claims.

We want to provide a constant source of creative inspiration that promotes sustainability in building design. We would love to branch out to larger media such as tv programmes, using home building & renovation case studies to show the public that sustainable design is achievable.

igolo.org | IG: @igolohome

 

 

 

Rebekah Killigrew
Rebekah Killigrewhttp://www.rebekahkilligrew.com
Editor | ww.architecturemagazine.co.uk | www.interiordesigner.co.uk

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