Sustainable Furniture Services

Crown Workspace supports organisations to reduce the carbon impacts of changing workplace through the provision of a sustainable range of furniture services. Services include extending the lifespan of existing furniture assets, offering quality refurbished/remanufactured items to displace new items, and providing quality refurbished furniture assets ‘as a service’ to meet interim needs sustainably.  

Detailed audits of existing assets – Furniture audits help identify items that can be used for future projects. Items are photographed, their condition scored, and their details captured in a database to help manage clients’ assets most effectively. 

Storage for reuse – For clients who will regularly reuse items across estates a storage system is provided alongside an online inventory, enabling the reuse and management of these assets, so items can be readily ordered and delivered within 24 hours.   

Refurbishment and remanufacturing at the Renew Centre – A growing team are employed and trained in a variety of areas of expertise including upholstery, metal spraying, CNC operation, carpentry, CAD design and planning, and furniture fitting.  

The Renew Centre – Each year Crown Workspace remanufactures and refurbishes tens of thousands of items through the Renew Centre. 

• Provides high-quality remanufactured and refurbished furniture 
• Reduces the cost of updating furniture 
• Extends the lifecycle of clients’ assets 
• Provides cost effective quality refurbished assets with a warranty 

Reuse through resale to gain rebates  – The clearance of a workplace is often an end-of-project consideration, but early involvement from Crown Workspace allows an assessment of furniture resources, outlining of market level rebates and pre-catalogue items for sale, to provide clients with the maximum financial rebate. 

Selling Reused – sustainable procurement  – Crown Workspace support clients to procure remanufactured and refurbished office furniture that can meet quality and performance requirements through their retail channel www.officeresale.co.uk. 

Reuse through donation to benefit society – Crown Workspace gives clients the opportunity to ‘give back’ by donating unwanted furniture to charities, schools and social enterprises through their Giving Back Project. This initiative has distributed over 25,000 items across charities, schools and social enterprises to date. 

Recycling and recovery – Crown Workspace has a network of local recycling and reprocessing partners around the country to ensure that where resources cannot be reused, as much as possible is recycled.  

Management of information and reporting – Crown Workspace provides information e.g. Economic savings, certificate of giving, carbon savings within a Client Savings Report. In 2020 Crown Workspace’s services enabled clients to make the following savings: 

• Renew Centre – 15,394 items of furniture remanufactured, saving 1,013 tonnes of CO2e when compared to purchasing new.
• Renew IT – 10,630 items of IT reconditioned, saving 1,568 tonnes of CO2e when compared to buying new.
• Giving Back Project – 3,826 items of furniture donated to good causes, saving schools and charities £190,000 and 255 tonnes of CO2e when compared to buying new.  

Crown Workspace also offer the provision of quality refurbished office furniture on “as a service” basis or with a guaranteed buy-back option.  

Services on offer can be provided independently or as a full sustainable clearance service that would include operational costs associated with logistics, varying greatly depending on individual project requirements. Crown Workspace provide quotes at no cost unless a detailed audit is needed. If they proceed with working on the project the cost of the audit is taken off the final bill.

Buying Refurbished – Crown Workspace quote cost savings of approximately 70% when comparing the cost of remanufacturing and refurbishing furniture to buying new.

Sustainable Clearance – By maximising reuse, Crown Workspace estimate a typical 40% cost reduction over traditional linear approaches.

Furniture as a Service – Crown Workspace’s furniture service can save clients up to 76% compared to buying new and 54% compared to buying refurbished.  This is based on providing 50 high quality branded chairs and desks for a 6-month period.  Whether it’s a temporary requirement or marginal capacity to scale up or down, clients only pay for furniture when needed.  Excess furniture can be returned to Crown Workspace with no need to pay for storage or disposal, and no hidden costs.