Up to 1.2million office desks and 1.8million still fit-for-task but simply out-of-fashion task chairs go to UK landfill every year. This results in the loss of potentially useful materials and resources, creating further emissions, pollution and nature degradation.  With much of this redundant furniture then replaced with new items, the outcome is further carbon emissions, waste, pollution, nature degradation and finite resource depletion.   

I’d like to share how a simple focus on SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production has helped our clients reduce furniture waste, carbon and pollution. This focus has also enabled clients to evidence sustainable procurement in action, generate baseline data for future carbon reduction and achieve significant budget savings.  

Using furniture resources already in place or those we are about to buy for twice as long means we can reduce embodied carbon and costs by 50%, a good first step towards Net Zero. 

My Net Zero journey started when our largest client called a meeting in 2015 to ask what JPA Workspaces was doing about carbon reduction and sustainability.  Encountering a professionally qualified sustainability manager for the first time was a truly terrifying experience in 2015 but we had to respond with a plan - which we did, albeit very simple.  We began our sustainability adventure by focusing on environmental and waste issues which we already knew something about through ISO14001, joining the dots gradually as a larger sustainability picture formed.  None of our other clients displayed any interest in environmental impact in the meantime but the arrival of Covid accelerated demand and indeed our own progress faster towards Net Zero than we had thought possible which is why I am here today sharing my experiences.