When Unico Properties began repurposing a former Boeing office near Seattle for new tenants, the property management company ended up with 969 tons of unwanted furniture.
Trevor Langdon was glad to take it off their hands — and play an increasingly popular role in the ever-shifting office market.
“The conventional solution has been the liquidator who takes it to a landfill,” Langdon, CEO of Green Standards, told CoStar News. Instead, Green Standards brokered the sale and donation of Boeing's unwanted chairs, desks, tables, carpeting, appliances and other materials so that nothing was sent to a landfill.
“There is so much churn and change happening in workplaces right now” that if employers continue to use liquidators, “the amount of waste that will end up in landfills will be tragic,” Langdon said.
More office tenants and property managers may soon find themselves in a situation similar to Unico. Employers are increasingly choosing to renovate workspaces to reflect post-pandemic work habits, according to architecture firms. Meanwhile, Environmental, Social and Governance principles are pushing companies and nonprofit organizations to recycle.
As a result, a cottage industry has emerged to seize the business opportunity. Recyclers like Green Standards, Chicago-based Rheaply and Globechain in London, and liquidators like Total Office Solutions in Dallas, take unwanted office furniture and divert it from landfills. They donate it to charities or sell it at a discount to employers that can’t afford to buy new.
Office Scrap Heap
Discarded office furniture is a major contributor to landfills. About 17 billion pounds of office assets go to landfills each year, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study from 2018, the most recent data generated by the agency.
When employers move or renovate, they usually want new office furniture, said Andy Gutman, president of Detroit-based commercial real estate services provider Farbman Group. But new furniture is expensive.
“There are companies that can afford new furniture or that can get their landlords to pay for it,” Gutman told CoStar News. “But not everyone is in that position.”
The supply stream of unwanted furniture is likely to keep growing if certain office trends persist, including downsizing or subleasing unwanted space.
U.S. office tenants have vacated 40 million square feet more than they have occupied during the first six months of this year, according to Phil Mobley, national director of office analytics at CoStar. In the sublease market, about 216 million square is available, more than twice the amount at the end of 2019.
Interior design projects can also generate surplus desks, chairs and cubicle walls. Only a minority of employers have renovated offices since the pandemic, according to a recent study by architecture firm Gensler.
At the same time, the push toward recycling furniture is still gaining ground, partly because it's a process that requires extra time and effort.
Even so, a growing number of existing and potential clients of Gensler are reaching out to ask about it, according to the firm.
Designer Furniture
Twitter in November auctioned “surplus corporate office assets” at its San Francisco headquarters, including Eames office lounges and other designer furniture.
There’s also a furnishings push afoot in corporate America to improve worker morale by upgrading the lowly office chair. New furniture at JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters will include chairs that support the head and neck, David Arena, head of global real estate, told CoStar News in November. That means suddenly out-of-style, but still relatively new, furniture is available.
Whether to update office chairs is just one of many questions that employers face if they decide to undertake a major renovation. DLR Group, an architecture firm with 29 U.S. offices, consulted with office furniture maker Steelcase before starting the renovation of its office in Overland Park, Kansas, Jessica Crandall told CoStar News.
“Right now it’s an outdated layout with pod clusters” of desks, said Crandall, a senior associate architect in DLR’s Kansas City office. “It’s more collaborative to have everyone facing toward a spine so you have more visibility throughout the floor."
Steelcase, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, brokered the donation and sale of the office furniture DLR wanted to replace, Crandall said. Much of it went to Flourish Furniture Bank in Kansas City.
Employers that have adopted ESG standards need data reporting tools to track progress on meeting goals, Langdon said. Green Standards' software measures an employer’s sustainability initiatives like carbon dioxide avoidance and landfill diversion rates, both achieved in part by recycling office furniture.
“Companies can’t commit to large sustainability goals and then fail on this by dumping most of their furniture into a landfill,” Langdon said.
If an office tenant is departing a building and buying furniture for its new location, sometimes the easiest solution is donating or selling it to the landlord, Gutman said.
“Some landlords have speculative office suites and they like to keep those furnished for tenants on a tight deadline that need a quick turnaround,” he said.
Handing over desks and chairs to a landlord who will keep using them is also good for the environment, Gutman said.
“If you can find a new place for discarded furniture, it feels good to not throw it into a landfill,” Gutman said.