Anew: A sustainable alternative for workspace innovation

bright conference table with plants and brick wall

Imagine upcycling your existing office space at 30-50% less cost, with 0% of your existing furniture ending up in the landfill. You’d probably laugh and call us crazy!

Well, that’s exactly what happened when a former SPACE employee encountered a project with the Department of Health and Human Services. The government agency needed to consolidate five buildings worth of people into one new space. They assumed they’d need to abandon and dispose of their existing furniture assets to start over.

A bold and unique idea: sustainable office furniture and design

The SPACE employee brought me a unique idea. Instead of starting from scratch, what if we reused and updated the existing products, effectively reinventing the interior space to support the client’s business drivers?

I was sold. Saving our clients money and saving tons of furniture from entering the landfill? Win, win. The Department of Health and Human Services project saved the client more than $5 million dollars from their original budget. And it reused 93% of their existing assets—with none going to the landfill.

We quickly brought the sustainable office furniture and design concept back to our headquarters in Midland, MI to explore further.

Sustainability at its best

According to the EPA, every year, the office furniture industry creates 9 million tons of waste. When we officially launched Anew in 2010, we saw a clear need for an alternative and sustainable solution. Upcycling meets design requirements while contributing to a triple bottom line: people, planet, and process.

We’ve found that our clients are simply amazed by what we can do, because they’re so used to the old, dark, or dingy space. And they love knowing they’re meeting their sustainability goals and making positive strides for future generations.

Upcycle. Redeploy. Recycle.

Whenever we work on an Anew project, we follow a three-step process.

  1. Upcycle: Our first goal is to inventory your existing assets. We reduce them to their lowest common denominator and reinvent them to accomplish your goals. For example, a table can be broken into a top, four legs, and maybe an electrical unit. We may paint, add graphics, cut, or reupholster those elements to create something new.
  2. Redeploy: Next, we identify and move furniture assets another location—such as another one of your office buildings—or donate them to nonprofits or schools. 
  3. Recycle: Finally, we give leftover items to one of our purposeful recycling partners. They dispose of the elements via environmentally-approved methods.

Our finished project is not just a simple new coat of paint. That’s called refurbishing. Rather, upcycling is a design solution that focuses on reinventing your office space by purposefully updating your existing furniture assets.

Our sustainability goal by 2025

At SPACE Anew, we’ve set a goal of keeping 15 million pounds of furniture out of landfills by 2025. And we’re confident we can accomplish it.

One strategy we use is our unique inventory program. When our designers begin an Anew project, they assign a weight to each item—using the EPA’s Weight Guides for Office Furniture. This allows us to easily track results of how much furniture we’re upcycling, redeploying, or recycling.

As a businesswoman and a grandmother myself, this program brings me immense joy. I know I’m not only saving clients’ money, but also creating a better environment for my kids and grandkids.