As hybrid offices look to offload unused furniture, HR has a hand in eco-friendly solutions
With hybrid work leaving half-empty offices saddled with tons of unused desks and chairs, companies are looking for alternatives to shipping it off to landfills — and HR can play an essential role.
Getting gently used commercial furniture into the hands of community organizations and others who need it requires planning, collaboration, creativity and expertise, according to a new research paper from commercial furniture solutions company Installnet and Bard College’s MBA program in sustainability. Doing so also benefits from the buy-in of company leaders and employees, with HR often the common link, suggested Dale Ewing, CEO of Installnet.
“One of the biggest challenges is thinking that it’s easier than it is. A lot of companies out there say they can do this, and most don’t do it well,” said Dale Ewing, CEO of Installnet, which has a full-time outreach team that partners with clients to get unwanted items like desks, chairs and conference tables into the hands of those who most need it.
Beyond community service and helping the environment, such projects can be a way for employees to feel more connected, Ewing noted. “From an HR standpoint, you talk about engagement, you talk about culture, you talk about purpose and having a real connection to something that’s really great,” he said. “There’s a real value for employees to be involved.”
Since 2012, Installnet’s Ecoserv program has diverted more than 52 million pounds of waste from landfills to groups in more than 3,200 communities. The donations help local nonprofits, schools, first responders and others devote more resources to their missions and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that worsen climate change.
Each year, more than 146 million tons of solid waste goes to landfills in the U.S., generating dangerous methane gas emissions that worsen climate change — the equivalent of 20.3 million passenger cars on the road, according to the EPA. An estimated 9 million tons, close to half of that waste, is furniture.
The paper cites several examples of decommission projects that successfully matched unused furniture and other assets to community organizations. In Oregon and Maryland, for example, 90,000 pieces of furniture in two warehouses were dispersed across six weeks via resale and donations, keeping it out of the public dump.
Dave Corsones, president of MOI, an office furniture dealer based in Baltimore, related that when refreshing its home base, it ended up with perfectly good desks, chairs and other materials people could still make use of — even if it meant more effort on the company’s part. “Rather than hitting the easy button and just tearing it all down and sending it off to a landfill, we wanted to figure out how to try and do our very best to divert everything through a combination of employees, sale, donation and efficient recycling,” he said.
The result: MOI, with the aid of Installnet, diverted 22 tons of furniture to local nonprofits like the Baltimore City Schools, Habitat for Humanity and Bridges Baltimore.
It wasn’t just the right thing to do, he said — it was smart business, according to Corsones, who called it “a really great opportunity for us to put the goals we had as an organization sustainability-wise into practice.”
Rachel Lazo, chief of staff at Bridges Baltimore, said the donation was instrumental in helping the nonprofit, which serves local youth, expand its offices and meeting spaces. “We have to fundraise for every dollar in our operating budget, every year,” she explained. “If we had to buy furniture it would affect what we put toward programs and services. We’re serving 440 young people, and we want our budget to go to serving those 440 young people.”
She added that the used furniture “will see a long second life here. I’m talking to you from behind my donated desk right now, and I love it.”