6 minute read
How To
The long road from LANDFILL…
In this How To… guide, Joanna Knight identifies some of the environmental issues facing the furniture industry and the practices that can be adopted to support greater sustainability within it
Surely by now, any doubts about climate change and the impact human activity is having on the planet have been well and truly quashed. Google, for example, has announced that it will explicitly prohibit all advertisements which contradict the “well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change”.
With the UK hosting the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow this November (see Hot Topic, page 24), attention is focused on positive action to halt our environmental damage. The office furniture market is not exempt from this damage. Furniture manufactured from virgin resources, which is currently the majority, contributes to 30% of the carbon footprint of a commercial building over its entire life.
In 2017, the Furniture Industry Research Association (FIRA) reported that over 600 tonnes of furniture and mattresses are sent to landfill every year, with an estimated £760 million ($1 million) of recyclable and reusable resources from all waste materials being lost to UK landfills annually.
POSITIVE START BUT NOT ENOUGH
Some suppliers have made a start by implementing environmental management systems (EMS) and assessing the carbon footprint of their operations. These actions are positive but do not, unless emissions are measured throughout the supply chain, incorporate the impact of components or imported finished products.
FIRA’s Healthy Workstations report, back in 2011 meanwhile, acknowledged that in the majority of furniture ranges examined, the embedded carbon contained within the materials and processes used for the manufacture of the product were the highest contributors to its carbon footprint, rather than company factors such as utilities or transportation.
As such, reducing the materials used or opting for lower impact alternatives can considerably reduce an item’s carbon footprint.
MEASURING ‘GREEN’
Sustainability is ultimately about balancing three key factors: the environment, society and the economy. Any organisation should therefore be reviewing and committing to an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy embracing overall corporate and social responsibility – not just carbon emissions.
An EMS provides a framework through which environmental performance can be monitored, improved and controlled. Many members of the furniture industry have already achieved the international standard ISO EN 14001, but this is just a starting point. Working on the basis that ‘what gets measured gets managed’, an EMS is based around continuous improvement and a mechanism to set targets and goals.
Carbon footprint is now an important metric and greenhouse gas emissions are categorised within three scopes. Scope 1 covers the emissions that a company puts out directly while Scope 2 incorporates those it makes indirectly such as the electricity and energy it purchases.
Scope 3 is more challenging. This category includes all the emissions an organisation is indirectly responsible for. It works upstream and downstream – from buying products and materials from suppliers all the way to the emissions from the final marketed items when customers use them.
There is plenty of guidance available – from government websites, for instance – to assist in
THE WAY FORWARD: ECO-DESIGN
The main goal is to anticipate and minimise negative environmental impacts in terms of manufacturing, using and disposing of products. The design stage is an important part here. By developing items that are durable, easy to repair and upgrade, and where recovery and recycling is enabled at the end of life, designers can provide the best possible conditions for material efficiency.
Some manufacturers are focused on introducing more responsible materials within existing designs. This approach, however, doesn’t consider the full lifecycle – what happens when the product is no longer required?
The UK government’s Waste Prevention consultation paper in early 2021 reported that “an estimated 80-90% of the environmental impacts in the lifecycle of furniture items is linked to the design and components of the products”.
Composite materials frequently prevent recycling. Similarly, manufacturing techniques may also avert material reclamation. The staples used in soft seating, for instance, reduce the reuse potential of wooden frames.
Durability and longevity are important features for eco-design. The idea is to maximise the lifecycle of the raw materials. But this concept is not supported by the ‘fast fashion’ approach of the workplace sector over recent years. We need to change our attitudes or accept that we must embrace products which are specifically designed for remanufacturing or redesign.
Eco-design considers the complete lifecycle including ‘design for disassembly’ – aimed intentionally at material recovery, value retention, and meaningful next use. This is a major step forward and a start down the road to circularity.
AIMING FOR A CIRCULAR ECONOMY
The office and contract furniture market has historically been highly linear, with a ‘take, make, use, dispose’ culture. A circular economy is an alternative approach in which we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life (see also Spotlight, page 28).
But the furniture market has long been driven by the quest for greater efficiency to ultimately bring down the purchase price. Just-in-time manufacturing has reduced warehousing and stockholding costs. As a result, it is now difficult and costly for many manufacturers to restructure to facilitate reverse logistics, disassembly and ‘triage’ necessary to achieve circularity.
New commercial models are on the horizon, with take-back, exchange or Furniture-As-A-Service schemes being developed. They will help facilitate greater reuse. The potential here is enormous.
Proving the environmental credentials of furniture products is complicated. A registered Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is
Bisley’s EPD-registered Caddy range. Caddy provides secure storage for personal items in flexible working environments recognised by many specifiers. According to the International EPD system, “manufacturers report comparable, objective and third-party verified data that show the good, the bad and the evil about the environmental performance of their products and services”. However, achieving a registered EPD requires considerable effort and is expensive, prohibitive even, for some manufacturers.
Equally, there are numerous eco labels for environmentally sound furniture, but there’s no universal recognition. This is very much an area requiring further development.
WHY IT MATTERS
It’s hard to ignore the immense publicity surrounding climate change. An attitude of “one furniture company won’t make that much difference” is not acceptable anymore. Specifiers and clients now have the tools to ask questions of manufacturers relating to sustainability. This is leading to preferred supplier lists and the exclusion of those not complying.
In June 2021, the UK government issued a Procurement Policy Note setting out how public sector buyers should take account of suppliers’ net zero carbon reduction plans in the procurement of major government contracts. This will undoubtedly filter through to the commercial sector too.
Corporate investment is increasingly dependent on the potential recipient being able to demonstrate green commitments – across its entire supply chain. Caution is necessary though: some manufacturers are turning to greenwashing for commercial gain, ie they make exaggerated or misleading claims about sustainability and environmental impact.
That said, greenwashing is becoming more treacherous, with publications and websites now naming and shaming the culprits. The Competition and Markets Authority also warns that “manufacturers or suppliers making dubious claims are putting themselves at risk of prosecution”. A measure of deterrence, at least.
