Commercial furniture solutions company Installnet and Bard College鈥檚 MBA program in sustainability released new research highlighting the growing need to reduce and eliminate furniture waste in commercial buildings. The paper, 鈥淐losing Loops, Opening Opportunities: The Future of Circularity in the Commercial Furniture Industry鈥� is part of a new collective to develop and implement real world solutions.
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. That鈥檚 the equivalent of 20.3 million passenger cars on the road, according to the EPA. An estimated 9 million tons of that waste is furniture.
鈥淭his problem can only be solved by collaborating across the value chain to create consistent, credible standards and practices,鈥� said Installnet CEO Dale Ewing. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all struggling with issues like measuring our impact, identifying uses for items that can鈥檛 be recycled and finding cost effective ways to get furniture to people who need it. It鈥檚 time for players across the commercial real estate sector to come together and get zero done.鈥�
Michaela Flynn, a recent graduate of the Bard College MBA program in sustainability, developed the research paper. 鈥淲hile many challenges and opportunities exist, the most urgent problem to collectively address is the accurate and transparent measuring and reporting of the sustainability impact of diversion,鈥� Flynn writes. 鈥淭his requires the involvement of all industry players – and cannot be done with just one or two standalone actors. Accurate measurement and reporting will lay the foundational groundwork necessary for the improvement and acceleration of sustainability and circularity within the commercial furniture industry.鈥�