Buying Sustainable Office Furniture

Sustainability

When purchasing furniture, there are many qualities that you might take into account: cost, appearance, durability, how modular it is, etc. But another quality that is important is sustainability. The same is true when you get rid of old furniture.

Sustainability is the management of resources to fulfill your needs while ensuring you do not deplete the resources for future generations. In simpler words, it means using only what you need and using materials that can be used again and again.

How one achieves this can come in many forms, but when buying, you can break it down into whether or not the furniture is new, the materials the furniture is made of, and how the furniture gets to you. When it comes to getting rid of old furniture, understanding how to recycle your furniture is the most important step to proper sustainability.

The Issue With Buying New

It may be tempting to buy brand-new furniture when it’s time to reimagine an office setup or when you are opening your office for the first time, but the environmental cost is high. This blog from SoftFrame Designs goes into detail about that cost. Furniture production causes deforestation and thus increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The other issue with buying new is that rather than giving used furniture a new purpose, it is going to landfills. According to this NIH study, approximately “51 million tonnes of furniture are consumed annually worldwide, with 48.6 million tonnes discarded.” This leads to more greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals within the furniture spreading into the ground below it.

Buying new does mean you can have the top-of-the-line ergonomics and consistency with design, but the environmental toll makes it unsustainable to do so.

The Benefits of Buying Used

Buying used furniture can allow your company to contribute to a more sustainable office future. By taking preexisting furniture and making it your own, you can prevent furniture from going into a landfill sooner than it would normally go, lowering the amount of harmful chemicals that leach into the environment.

That also means that the production of new furniture to fit that need would not be necessary and, because of how detrimental new furniture is to the environment, you are preventing the factories from producing harmful chemicals.

The other benefit is that it is cheaper. New furniture is quite expensive, and so buying used means that you can save funds that could then be used for other purposes to benefit an office environment, like amenities for your workers.

Overall, buying used is better for your company and for the environment, which means it’s better for everyone.

Is It Ever Okay to Buy New

It is normally more beneficial to buy used, but if you have to buy new, there are things you can do to ensure you are still acting sustainably. These include buying furniture made from sustainable materials, buying with long-term use in mind, and buying from sustainable furniture manufacturers.

Buying Furniture With Sustainable Materials

If you have no choice but to buy new furniture, seeking out new furniture made of sustainable materials is one step to being sustainable. This usually means that rather than buying furniture made of new materials, you can buy new furniture made from recycled materials. This way, you still get new furniture while putting the sustainability concern onto the production end rather than the user end.

There are also materials that are new, but are still sustainable. These include biodegradable plastic, non-harmful chemical produced materials, and wood that has been harvested sustainably. There are sustainable furniture certifications furniture can receive, such as FSC certification, that can let you know if the furniture was made sustainably. You can see this on products such as the Abl chair from Keilhauer, which is sustainably made.

Abl chair from Keilhauer

A perfect example of this is the Haworth Breck Office Chair, which is a sustainable office chair that uses over 50% recycled material and is made to ensure a minimum furniture carbon footprint. By buying new in this way, you can have sustainability be a focus while still procuring top-of-the-line sustainable workplace furniture.

Breck Chair from Haworth

Buying From Sustainability-Focused Companies

When shopping for new furniture, another way to focus on production-end sustainability is to purchase from companies that have expressed sustainability goals. This can come in the form of emission promises, choices of materials used, use of renewable energy over non-renewable energy, and other ethical production methods.

Through the use of circular furniture design, companies can ensure that from the production of the furniture to the end of its lifecycle, sustainability is considered. This means that the company is considering its office furniture’s lifecycle from beginning to end. Looking at a company’s website to see what their sustainability decisions are allows you to be certain that the entire process of buying new furniture has been planned, limiting your environmental footprint.

Companies might have programs that aim to create circular design. Examples of this are The Loop from Boss Designs or Andreu World’s zero waste certification. Seeking out these sorts of companies will be necessary when buying new furniture.

Buying Furniture With Long-Term Use In Mind

When buying new furniture, it is important to think about your office furniture lifecycle–how long you intend to keep the furniture for, how to prolong that length, and what you intend to do with it when you ultimately get new furniture. Sustainable office furniture purchasing takes thoughtful consideration, but it is also very important.

Mori tables from Boss Designs

Keeping office furniture for a longer time ultimately means that you avoid getting new furniture too often, and it prevents furniture from ending up in a landfill immediately. Alongside looking into sustainable materials, thinking about sustainable office furniture with timeless aesthetics, such as the Mori or Brooke from Boss Designs, both of which are timeless and 100% recyclable, and making sure you are purchasing durable furniture are great ways to make sure your furniture lasts a long time.

Brooke table from Boss Designs

And when it is time to get rid of the furniture, rather than throwing it away, you can recycle it, either by donating the furniture or by selling it to another company that is willing to buy it at a reduced price. This way, other people can continue to make use of the furniture even after your use of it has ended.

You could also strive to use materials that are biodegradable. That way, if you do feel that the furniture is beyond repair and must be thrown away, it will at least be furniture that can be comfortably discarded. This mycelium-based furniture from Materials Assemble is one great example of this.

By thinking forward, you can meet sustainability goals for your company.

Recycling Your Furniture

There will come a time when furniture will no longer be useful, either because it has broken or because you inevitably have to buy something newer. Planning for that time is a necessary step in achieving sustainability.

There are many ways to recycle furniture, but the best way to do it is to give it a new life in another place. There are lots of people who would be willing to use the furniture even if you no longer have a use for it.

Organizations like NYC’s Donate NYC aim to limit the amount of waste in landfills in part by taking donations of furniture and other products. You can also donate them to local establishments or organizations that may need furniture. There are also furniture take-back programs, like the Rex Collection from Hightower, that involve buying back old but still viable furniture to reuse it in the future.

You can also sell it to another company. Just like how you may buy secondhand office furniture to aid in your sustainability efforts, other companies may do the same to ensure they also have sustainable office furniture.

Another way to recycle your furniture is to simply recycle it. To do this, you must first have bought recyclable office furniture. By buying workplace furniture with recyclable materials, you can rest easy knowing that the furniture you once used is being reused for a new purpose.

From the Factory to Your Office

The last step in getting sustainable commercial furniture is to think about the process of how the furniture will get to you and what steps you can take in buying furniture to limit waste in that process. Transporting furniture means using a lot of gasoline, which pollutes the air, so minimizing the distance and number of trucks the furniture involves is important.

One way to improve your commercial furniture environmental impact is to buy local. By decreasing the distance trucks carrying the furniture must go, you decrease the amount of gas used, thus reducing the amount of greenhouse gases put into the air.

Another way is to think about the materials used. The heavier an object, the less fuel-efficient it is. Therefore, if you buy furniture made from lighter materials, you can reduce the amount of fuel used to transport it, meaning it is more sustainable.

On top of that, thinking about the shape of the furniture is also important, as furniture that is stackable and compact will allow for more items of that furniture to be put into a truck at a time. This leads to fewer trucks being used to transport the furniture.

How to Purchase Furniture Sustainably

When buying furniture, if you think about the furniture not just in how it will be used at your company, but the whole process of how it is made, how it is brought to your office, and what you will do with it when you are done with it, you can understand how to have sustainable furniture procurement.

If you take all of these elements into consideration, you can ensure the materials and procedures of getting the furniture are all sustainable.

At WB Wood, we prioritize sustainability in our projects and facilities, as we strive to make a positive impact on the environment. We align ourselves with like-minded organizations who share our values and amplify our collective efforts towards reducing our ecological footprint.

To see what WB Wood can do for you, visit our Offerings and Services page: https://wbwood.com/our-offerings/

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