Furniture Recycling: Good for Your Business

Today, remanufactured office furniture is becoming the furniture of choice for more and more companies because it outperforms new furniture in several ways.
Let's look at the benefits:

Design Benefits
Many consumers are amazed at the options available when choosing recycled and refurbished furniture. Instead of a pre-determined selection of colors, fabrics and finishes, refurbished office furniture allows you and your designer complete creative freedom.

Cost Benefits
Buying recycled is an excellent cost-cutting opportunity, generally offering a savings of 30 to 50 percent off the cost of new furniture. Recycling also sets a great example for your company's employees. It shows that your firm is managing the company's assets wisely and sends the message that conservation and waste reduction is an important corporate goal.

Furniture Recycling: Good for the Environment

As we all look for new ways to reduce, reuse and recycle, here are just a few examples of how buying recycled office furniture helps our environment:

Conserving Natural Resources
Because fewer raw materials are used, refurbishing conserves energy and natural resources. Office furniture recycling extends the lives of resources already in circulation such as aluminum, steel, plastics and fiber, using them over and over to the fullest extent possible. Industry experts estimate that for each pound of natural resources used in remanufacturing, five to nine pounds of original materials are conserved!

Solid Waste Stream Reduction
By recycling office furniture, the products as well as the natural resources are diverted from the solid waste stream. The EPA has estimated that approximately 3 million tons of office furniture and furnishings are discarded each year. For example, fabrics in panel systems tend to wear out and the colors become outdated. By refurbishing, the fabrics can be replaced and the office furniture returned to the market for a second life. Recycling results in fewer products filling up limited landfill space.

Energy Conservation
Recycling office furniture conserves labor and manufacturing energy. The amount of labor and energy required to alter an existing product during refurbishing is 85 to 95 percent less than that required to manufacture a new product. And, since much of the product has already been manufactured, refurbishing saves the enormous amounts of energy required for production, especially when metals are kept out of the resmelting process.