Sustainability Week at Figma | Figma Blog

Figma’s first Sustainability Week combined employee education, workplace initiatives, and investment in climate technology. The company is pursuing net-zero emissions by 2040 through carbon accounting, offset purchases, and support for emerging carbon-removal methods. Its central message is that meaningful climate action requires both reducing current emissions and helping promising technologies scale.

Sustainability Week Activities

• Figma hosted five days of programming focused on individual and organizational sustainability.
• Employees learned about climate solutions through:
  • A discussion with Charm Industrial CEO Peter Reinhardt
  • A tour of Charm’s San Francisco facilities
  • Climate documentaries, books, and educational YouTube channels
• The company also:
  • Displayed climate trivia in global offices
  • Offered locally grown food at its San Francisco and New York hubs
  • Created a sustainability wiki on Notion
  • Curated organizations eligible for Figma’s donation-matching program
• These activities encouraged employees to focus on manageable actions such as reducing emissions, cutting waste, and conserving energy.

Figma’s Climate Commitments

• Employees began exploring carbon accounting and offsets in 2021.
• The group became Figma’s official Net Zero social impact group in 2022.
• Figma signed the Climate Pledge and aims to reach net zero by 2040.
• The company works with Watershed to:
  • Measure its annual carbon footprint
  • Purchase carbon-removal, offset, and avoidance credits
  • Support projects through Watershed’s climate marketplace
• Figma invested $750,000 in offset and avoidance credits through Watershed in 2024, following an earlier $500,000 investment in carbon removal.

Carbon-Removal Technologies

• Charm Industrial uses fast pyrolysis to convert organic waste, or biomass, into:
  • Biochar, which can improve soil and store carbon
  • Bio-oil, which can be injected deep underground for permanent sequestration
• Figma’s 2024 climate portfolio also includes:
  • Wakefield’s biochar production from waste wood
  • UNDO’s enhanced rock weathering, which accelerates natural carbon-storage processes
  • Vaulted Deep’s underground storage of human organic waste
• Figma has continued investing in Charm Industrial’s bio-oil sequestration technology.

Scaling Climate Solutions

• Peter Reinhardt argued that companies need a detailed technical understanding of the actions that produce meaningful climate results.
• He recommended that companies:
  • Forecast carbon-accounting needs several years in advance
  • Invest strategically in smaller climate suppliers
  • Help emerging technologies and providers scale
• Figma presents corporate climate investment as a way to support technologies that may be essential for achieving future net-zero goals.

Figma’s approach combines internal behavior changes with long-term investment in carbon-removal infrastructure. Companies pursuing similar goals should measure emissions carefully, reduce what they can, and support credible technologies early enough to help them mature.