As you and your company, school, or other commercial space prepare to return to work, you’re likely thinking about risks and rewards.
- How will you create a place that gets people excited to return to work—even in a hybrid fashion?
- How can you overcome that “stay home” inertia, while keeping your costs and waste low?
- What should you do with your existing furniture assets—when they may no longer suit your workforce?
Many of our clients are facing these battles right now. And there’s potential for an “out with the old, in with the new” mindset.
The office sector produces too much waste
Recent news headlines stated bluntly and clearly: the office sector needs to face up to its landfill issue.
This is the sad truth: according to the EPA, over 9 million tons of office furniture end up in the landfill every year.
Unfortunately, discarding used furniture and other office products is the easy option. But there’s a better way—an option that both saves companies money and saves our environment from excessive waste.
A waste-free way to reinvent your workplace
With SPACE Anew, we reinvent your workplace by upcycling and reimagining your existing furniture assets.
Our designers add stylish and functional elements to brighten up your workplace—and entice your staff to stop in.
You receive our high quality redesign services with dramatically lower material costs, minimal disruption to your work, and zero percent waste.
Whenever we work on an Anew project, we follow a three-step process.
- 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.
- Redeploy: Next, we identify and move furniture assets to another location—such as another one of your office buildings—or donate them to nonprofits or schools.
- Recycle: Finally, we give leftover items to one of our purposeful recycling partners. They dispose of the elements via environmentally-approved methods.
3 additional ways SPACE is combatting furniture waste
As a team, we set a goal to keep 15 million pounds of furniture out of landfills by 2025. So far, we’ve passed the 2 million mark.
So how are we intentionally practicing what we preach?
- We deal for furniture companies that share our sustainable values. Companies like Haworth, AIS, and National share similar stances on reducing waste and producing flexible, long-lasting furniture that won’t soon need to be discarded.
- We source products locally whenever possible. This reduces waste when we don’t transport goods from overseas.
- We practice a cradle to cradle mentality. We donate products we can no longer use, we recycle metal, and we send wood work surfaces to a woodchipper to be repurposed.
Contact us to return to work the sustainable way.
