Recycling Office Furniture Help Save the Environment
Office desks, bookshelves, chairs, cubicles, sofas, conference tables and many other office products are now piling up as waste at landfills. They mostly came from companies who discarded the furnitures not because they are damaged, but for simply being outdated.
A survey by the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association or BIFMA, indicated that almost half of the junk may end up in landfills. The thing is, most of the dumped office furniture are still in good shape, only needing minor fix. Some of them, by just replacing the wheels and adding new upholstery, may even look like brand new items that just came out of the woodwork. Using refurbished furnitures save the already decreasing natural resources and reduce the strain on our landfills.
Recycling is a great endeavor which not only greatly contribute to environmental causes, but also saved companies millions of dollars wasted on disposal fees on unwanted furnitures. There were approximately three million tons of furniture and other similar equipments that were discarded in 1995. Imagine how much fortune that can be saved from these items. “Given a 1995 national average tipping fee of about $32 per ton (Solid Waste Digest), the potential avoided disposal costs are upwards of $100 million.”
Experts in the office furniture industry estimates that five to nine pounds of precious virgin materials are conserved for each pound of natural resources used in the manufacturing of second hand furniture. Landfill overload can drastically be avoided with the fact that recycling a workstation diverts about 850 pounds while remanufacturing 40 workstations diverts a tractor load of furniture.
Refurbished office furnitures doesn’t mean that quality is to be sacrificed. Although they are spruced up, the furnitures are reconditioned to provide variety in the workplace. They can be redesigned according to a companies’ specification. Plus, they save up to 90% off retail prices of new products because the manufacturing costs were absorbed when the furniture was first produced.
Save money and save the environment. Recycle.
Posted on: Workspace
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