Green-Works — New Life for Old Office Furniture
by Warren McLaren, Sydney 
on 03.31.06
Green-Works collects office furniture that is no longer required (remember the word ‘churn’ from yesterday?). They take these unwanted desks, filing cabinets, hat racks, chairs, boardroom tables and such forth and sell them, at bargain prices to cash strapped not-for-profits, like charities, schools and community groups. Beginning as a one-man-band nearly six years ago, it's now employing more than 80 people. Many of whom are “classified as disadvantaged or previously unemployed, and coming from ethic minority backgrounds.” The furniture that doesn’t find a new life in a different office is converted into storage units for homes, or donated for art projects. Components like plastic and metal are recycled. Anything left over after all this, is “chipped for use as Refuse Derived Fuel. As a consequence, 100% of the furniture that we process is diverted from landfill.” In a a strategic partnership with Harrow Green, the UK’s leading provider of workplace change solutions, the consortium had one major corporation donate 3,000 tonnes of office goods. “The same volume, had it been landfilled, would have created a hole large enough to bury 178 double-decker buses.” ::Green-Works
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A deeper discount for non-profits is good, as long as they are getting some reasonable profit themselves. Most cities have stores where you can buy used office furniture, In Chicago there are entire warehouses of it, just sitting around getting dusty.
Having worked in product design on office furniture, I think I am qualified to say that the older the office furniture is, the more likely it is to be good, solid, comfortable stuff (and good looking). I am not saying that the new stuff is junk, well, actually I am.
And to echo James, I concur. (Having sold second-hand office furniture thru a community reuse centre for the past 4 years.) Solid timber furniture just keeps on going. Whereas on the other hand, most formaldehyde riddled particleboard furniture can be "flat-packed" (so to speak) with about 5 careful aimed swings of a hammer.
good effort & good comments. It's hard not to buy modern junk furniture if buying new, unless you fork out tonnes of money but even the quality of costly designer pieces is often a let down & lifespan not any longer. Same for crappy housing construction. Houses not built to last, then apartment buildings just get dozed and land filled, then rebuilt with more new flimsy crap.
So where are the good links to find used office supplies (I'm looking for a file cabinet) in Toronto? :-)
Does anyone know of any groups that collect used office furniture in the San Francisco Bay Area? I've got a bunch of things I need to get rid of.