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Waste Not, Want Not: How The Circular Economy Can Be Central To Every Office Redesign
Insight from Michael Taylor, Managing Director of Mitie Waste
As the UK prepares for the end of lockdown restrictions, many businesses are thinking about when and how they bring their employees back to the workplace. However, with many colleagues having spent over a year working remotely, the traditional office-based model will likely be replaced with a flexible or hybrid model that allows employees to work primarily from home and use their time in the office for brainstorming, networking, training or client meetings.
As the office becomes a space to promote collaboration, many businesses are now considering if their sites are suited for this new purpose. Many companies are now thinking about replacing desks with meeting rooms and breakout areas, bringing forward the question of what to do with the furniture that’s no longer needed.
Throwing away furniture is expensive and has a negative impact on the environment, but embracing the circular economy offers a cost-efficient and environmentally friendly alternative. By reupholstering, selling or donating the furniture, it can be given a second lease of life, helping to preserve the planet’s natural resources while also achieving significant financial savings for the business.
At Mitie, we’ve used our facilities and waste management expertise to help our customers repurpose over 12,000 tonnes worth of furniture, the equivalent to 1,000 London buses, since 2016. Through this experience, we’ve identified four key steps that businesses should consider to prevent unnecessary landfill waste. By reusing as much furniture as possible and recycling only those pieces that can’t be used anymore, it’s possible to reconfigure an entire office without condemning anything to the bin.
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1.Make A List Before Calling The Moving Truck
Before the pandemic, many businesses offered some flexibility for where employees work, however, for the most part, colleagues that now work remotely used to spend the majority of their working hours on site. While many of us have realised there can be benefits of spending some of our working time at home, most businesses are now planning a return to their workspaces in some form. However, with this return comes a number of questions and competing objectives: how can we future proof the office, without a large expenditure? How does agile working fit with our company’s culture? And, perhaps most importantly, what do our colleagues want from their future workspace?
Before getting too far down the track, businesses should take a step-back to consider what model is best for their employees and how they want to use their workspaces to support alternative ways of working.
Employee surveys to understand their
preferences in terms of where they work and how they want to use the workplace will provide data on how many employees are expected to come into the office each day, helping determine the office space and number of desks that will be needed.
With this information to hand, Facilities Managers should take the time to create an inventory of the furniture they need, laying out the items already available, and in good condition, that should continue to be used. For businesses with multiple sites, it’s important to approach the entire estate in one go, so that furniture can be moved between locations as needed, rather than buying new items. This will help ensure that businesses are using all available resources which will, in turn, reduce the impact on the environment. And, with the COVID pandemic seeing many facilities managers being asked to deliver more with tighter budgets, this approach also helps to cut costs.
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