A waste-free, sustainable way to reinvent your workplace

reinvented board room workplace

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.

  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 to 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.

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?

  1. 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.
  2. We source products locally whenever possible. This reduces waste when we don’t transport goods from overseas.
  3. 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.

Contact Us

SPACE Inc. approved as first woman-owned small business to provide antimicrobial solution to federal agencies

federal government building at sunset

When Zaneta Puller and Sahar Pena attended a General Service Administration (GSA) small business town hall meeting last spring, they had no idea it would turn into something big. They couldn’t have guessed then that it would lead to a GSA schedule addition making SPACE the only women-owned agency in the U.S. approved to provide an antimicrobial solution for the COVID virus to federal agencies.

SPACE approved to provide SPACE Facility Armor to federal agencies

In 2004, SPACE received its first GSA schedule. It approved us to provide furniture installation and design solutions to federal government offices. Since then, we’ve proudly completed more than 1000 federal projects across the country. 

But the events of last summer have positioned us to provide even more for these customers. 

As the pandemic swept through the U.S. in March 2020, Zaneta Puller, Government Sales Support, and Sahar Pena, Director of Business Development, attended a webinar hosted by GSA. 

GSA expressed interest in expediting certain COVID-19 preventative solutions. The organization promised a speedy review of innovative PPE that could protect government employees—with extra emphasis on women-owned and/or small businesses.

Throughout the spring, we considered how to respond to the great need across the country. We began offering SPACE Facility Armor—which combines a CDC-approved, hospital grade disinfectant with an electrostatically charged application. It prohibits the growth of mildew, bacteria, and viruses on furniture and critical touch surfaces for over two years. 

We were confident that there was a need for this unique combination of science and technology.

And we’re proud to announce that SPACE Facility Armor has been added to our GSA schedule! Through this affordable product, we’re able to play a part in keeping workers safe.

The General Service Administration (GSA) is a government agency that oversees anything related to the operation and construction of federal buildings. Because they control the market of companies approved to provide services to federal agencies, holding a GSA contract is pivotal.

SPACE also is approved to provide sustainable SPACE Anew upcycling services to federal agencies

But that’s not all! We also were approved to add SPACE Anew into our GSA schedule.

In addition to creating healthy workplaces, we’re also mission-driven to pursue sustainable spaces. So, as the opportunity to present innovative solutions to GSA arose, we decided to share our upcycling service, SPACE Anew, as well. 

SPACE Anew is a bold, but simple, idea. It involves upcycling existing office space at 30-50% less cost, with 0% of furniture ending up in the landfill. According to the EPA, every year, the office furniture industry creates 9 million tons of waste. 

When we officially launched SPACE Anew in 2010, we saw a clear need for an alternative and sustainable furniture solution. We’re grateful to now expand this offering to the federal government!

The future of our work and GSA schedule

We’re thrilled to be at the forefront of serving the federal government. One of our core values at SPACE is caring for our community—which involves both people’s safety and the environment’s protection.

Through these groundbreaking GSA schedule additions, we’re now able to provide a full package to our government customers. 

As the government determines how to safely bring employees back into the office, they’re looking for safe solutions like ours. And, since SPACE designs for the future of work, we’re right in step with them—providing sustainable, safe, and affordable services.

“SPACE offers the peace of mind that our employees need to return to the office. Their designers are the best I’ve worked with and they helped find the right contract vehicle.” —SPACE federal government client.

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.