Office Spectrum: The many ways of pre-loved office furniture

Whether your furniture is worth salvaging and refurbishing, or not, Office Spectrum director Joyce Seeho will tell you, straight up. No greenwash here.

Her business has done the “churn” work for many top 100 companies, saving sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in landfill fees. Not to mention the savings to the planet.

In the huge project she did for Fairfax Media in Sydney 3000 workstations were repurposed.

• See an article on this topic in The Tenants and Landlords Guide to Happiness an ebook by The Fifth Estate in collaboration with the Better Buildings Partnership.

Clients have also included Google Sydney, Ausgrid Silverwater and SKM and ISIS in Perth.

In another major project, every bit of glass was re-used to build new meeting rooms.

“A workstation may be L-shaped, but we can straighten it out, or we might just cut a new top and add some new parts.”

Then there’s height adjustability, or other features that can be reworked to fit the new space.

Joyce says eco-refurbishing is not necessarily cheaper than buying new because of Australia’s high labour costs, but it’s quicker, and you’re saving on landfill. That brings the satisfaction and brand value of knowing you’ve contributed to saving embodied carbon and landfill.

Office Spectrum has an EMS (Environmental Management System) in place and is ISO14001 certified. It also has GECA licences for all workstations and Joyce has been invited to contribute to industry development of this sector.