Rethinking the Wasteful Office Decommission
- RDS Office Furniture
- 19 hours ago
- 1 min read
We’ve seen it. An office building goes dark, a familiar sight as companies relocate or resize. Soon after, the inevitable dumpsters arrive, quickly filling—often overflowing—with desks, chairs, and cabinets. Much of this discarded furniture is perfectly usable, sometimes barely used, yet its fate is destined for the landfill. This all-too-common scene became the standard approach for workplace decommissioning over many years, a routine process unfortunately synonymous with significant waste and squandered resources, representing countless missed opportunities to reclaim value.
Historically, however, this “take-make-dispose” approach hasn’t always been the norm. Resourcefulness and reuse have deep historical roots. The World Economic Forum points to examples like 3,000-year-old tools repurposed into ceramic vessels. Romans utilized waste materials from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, creating what Professor Allison Emerson describes as “staging grounds for cycles of use and reuse.” In essence, keeping resources in continuous use – the core idea of a circular economy – was the dominant model long before industrialization ushered in our current linear system in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Now, there’s a reemergence towards these circular principles. The goal is to mitigate waste significantly.
Processes like clearing out an office are transforming from simple disposal into acts that create a positive impact, benefiting the planet, people, and the bottom line.
This shift is becoming an essential practice in workplace design and management. Indeed is proving how this approach can turn the complex task of closing offices into compelling sustainability wins, save significantly on disposal and future buildout costs, and directly help the lives of others.