What happens to all the furniture when companies re-fit their offices?
When you organise a major sporting event, how do you dispose of all the loose fittings when the athletes have gone home? Many facilities managers have faced the first problem, while the second was a key issue for suppliers to the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Often when trying to find solutions to disposal at the same time as managing complex relocation projects, surplus furniture is handled as waste, or left to removal companies to dispose of.
While this is happening, charities of all sizes are making do with very poor furniture, are unable to fit-out buildings for use or have to use increasingly scarce financial resources to buy what they need. In larger organisations, lack of effective internal communication systems can mean that one section is purchasing furniture at the same time that another is making disposal plans — without them being aware of each other.
WRAP (the Waste and Resources Action Plan) produced a report in 2011, Benefits of Re-use: Case Study Office Furniture, which assessed the potential impact of furniture re-use.
It found that only 14 per cent of desks reaching end of life are being re-used. Also, estimates suggest that businesses in the UK are sending approximately 35,000 tonnes of desks to landfill each year, along with a wide range of other office furniture and equipment.
This vast quantity of usable goods filling landfill sites is having a significant financial impact — due to landfill costs — as well as contributing to carbon emissions and resource depletion from the production of new goods and their transportation.
Schemes in the past that have tried to resolve this have been faced with the difficulties of storing large quantities of bulky items without a funding stream to pay for warehousing. Internally within organisations, cumbersome manual systems have been all that has been available to manage the use of assets across divisions and sites. The growth of web-based technology and users’ familiarity with using it is supporting a number of schemes in the UK designed to help companies manage their internal resources better, and are bringing companies and charities together by creating virtual market places for surplus goods.
The company WARPit matches surplus or under-used resources within and between organisations. Based in north-east England, but with a national remit, it is the brainchild of Daniel O’Connor.
Before he set up WARPit, O’Connor worked as a waste manager. He would regularly see items going into skips that were still in a usable condition. Initially, he would make contact with local charities, who would sometimes find a use for the equipment. However, he quickly realised that there was a limit to what could be achieved in this way. He then had the idea of developing an automated web-based portal. It took 18 months to build the system, which went live in 2011.
Good for all parties
O’Connor sees it as a waste management tool that enables companies to support charities. He is enthusiastic about what has been achieved to date and plans to expand his services in future, now that the system has been tested.
WARPit is based on a computer matching service. Companies with furniture and equipment to donate enter the details on to a database. To date, over 18,000 items have been listed.
Charities and other eligible bodies sign-up as partners, which enables them to access the information on the database. When suitable items are available, the organisation makes arrangements to view and collect the goods.
Furniture is not stored by WARPit and all arrangements are between the two interested parties. A key element of the WARPit approach is that it functions as an internal matching system within organisations. Furniture can be made available internally before being released into the wider market, a function which has been taken up by many of the universities and local authorities that are subscribers. Sunderland City Council estimates that it saved over £200,000 in 20 months by using the system, during a time of workplace restructuring. This would not have been possible had it relied on a manual approach.
One London university has managed to share large quantities of laboratory equipment destined to be thrown away.
A website called Waste Match also helps companies in the quest to re-use furniture and equipment within the organisation. A social enterprise founded in 2012, it has enjoyed the support of RBS, which has been using it to handle the internal redistribution and disposal of much of the bank’s furniture during recent major restructuring. A web-based portal is due to go live shortly, providing a similar service to WARPit.
Also, through the service, RBS donated 20 desks to the Prince’s Trust to supplement existing furniture and to accommodate moving offices to larger premises. There were two positive outcomes of this: it meant that the Prince’s Trust now had good-quality modern furniture; but also, RBS had incurred zero cost from furniture disposal. Waste Match was also able to match around 90 per cent of The Prince’s Trust old furniture with another social enterprise.
Planet Office Global works in partnership with relocation management company Harrow Green. The result of this was that Harrow Green sent only three per cent of the 16,000 tonnes of furniture it processed in 2012 to landfill.
Good for all parties
Planet Office Global’s ‘Don’t Destroy — Redeploy’ programme matches charities’ requirements to clients’ corporate social responsibility goals and available assets. Harrow Green, on the other hand, takes care of the collection, re-distribution and installation. Businesses are provided with a short-list of potential charities to receive their donations allowing staff in contributing companies to decide on the beneficiaries.
John Lord, regional manager, Harrow Green, says that the arrangement “enables us, as an environmentally-conscious and socially responsible organisation, to take our practice to a new level”.
Deloittes in London used Planet Global to dispose of 158 pieces of furniture and equipment that were no longer needed, which were all donated for re-use.
None ended up being recycled or in the waste stream. This was the equivalent of nearly six tonnes of furniture with a CO2 saving of approximately 28 tonnes. Two charities benefited from this: the National Theatre Group and the London & Teen Challenge, Ilford. The market value of these goods was estimated to be around £11,500, which is effectively money pumped back into the local community. Deloitte was able to count this towards its philanthropic contributions.
Olympic schemes
These schemes are designed to manage the ongoing production of surplus furniture. For a major event, such as the Olympics, disposing of the furniture and equipment is a one-off. As the case study (right) shows, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralymic Games (LOCOG) managed this by requiring the furniture supplier to buy back goods at the end of the games, putting the disposal responsibility with them.
‘The Remains of the Games’ is a company that sells furnishings left over from the Athlete’s Village. There is a web-based portal on which the public can buy goods, just like normal online shopping.
Benefits
Organisations re-using furniture internally save money both in purchasing and disposing of surplus items. All the schemes provide assessments of CO2 and cost savings/cost equivalents, which can be used in CSR reporting. Identifying the charities that have benefited helps to create a feel-good factor among staff and other stakeholders. Clearly, the charities that receive the free furniture can see fairly substantial financial benefits.
WARPit estimates that organisations using its services have made savings of nearly 316,000 tonnes of C02, and diverted 70,000 kg of waste from the waste stream. The financial savings are estimated to be around £550,000. As Planet Office Global says, its scheme “replaces the cost and environmental impact of landfill disposal, such as tax liability, with social, sustainability and economic benefits, delivering a triple win — for businesses, charities and the environment.”
Funding
The schemes are financed in different ways, with WARPit using a subscription system (charities join for free and annual subscriptions range from £250 for small organisations up to £2000 for the very largest). Waste Match is largely funded by RBS, and works in association with Europa. Planet Office Global’s partnership with Harrow Green covers much of their operating costs.
‘The Legacy Remains’, which is the organisation distributing used items from the 2012 Olympics, has made sufficient profit on public sales of furniture and equipment to support the donation or discounted sale of goods.
All of the current schemes have the potential to grow, in terms of reach and impact. However, the challenge of timing remains: the trick is matching up the dates on which the unwanted furniture is to be removed with when the recipient is ready to receive it. The next challenge is to find solutions to this, with further partnerships across the facilities management sector a strong possibility.
Case study: Olympics
The legacy remains
Australian company Ramler supplied furniture to the Olympic venues and the Athlete’s Village. As part of the deal with LOCOG, Ramler bought back more than one million items.
They set up ‘The Remains of the Games’, an outlet for selling everything from 17,000 beds, 6,900 bean bags, 5,000 dining chairs to a range of office equipment.
The majority of sales have been via an online portal.
Paul Levin from Ramler was charged with managing the disposal. His job was to get as higher value back as possible from the furniture and equipment and thereafter to maximise the benefit for charities and community groups.
“The Legacy Remains” was set-up to provide furniture and equipment to charities, community groups and grass-roots sports organisations at heavily discounted prices, giving a little back to people who need it. The scheme was publicised in the charity press and using social media, where it spread rapidly.
Charities and others were asked to submit a case and at least 800 did so within a couple of days. Levin was keen to talk to them individually to understand their needs. Applicants had been assessed on the strength of their story, as judged by a panel including Levin and Tim Reddish, a paralympian.
The first two recipients were a charity setting up a retreat for parents of children with life-limiting illnesses in Manchester and another that runs a respite centre for teenagers with cancer in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.
The furniture has not all been given away for free, but significant discounts were agreed to enable them to access items that they otherwise could not afford.
“The key word in all of this is ‘legacy’. It was at the heart of London’s bid to get the Olympics and we want to make our own contribution to the cause by ensuring that our Olympic furniture ends up in a beneficial way”.
The group plans to use the brand at the Commonwealth Games next year, so charities and others should keep an eye on the site.
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