Green Furniture Hub: Rehoming leftover office furniture, en masse

Imagine a flat fee, just $250, to pick and choose the furniture and equipment you want from an office defit. Perfect for a new business or a very economical upgrade.

An eye-watering amount of waste, including high quality office furniture in pristine condition, is generated by large commercial office strip outs.

However, rehoming and recycling large quantities of furniture is challenging, as it can be time consuming, labour intensive and cost a premium to do so. For most businesses that’s not an option.

Rajiv Midha, recognised there was an opportunity to develop a cost neutral and scalable pathway that would extend the life of furniture after an office defit and so started up Green Furniture Hub or GFH based on his solutions.

• How the Better Buildings Partnership can help reduce waste and costs from your next workplace refurbishment

GFH is an online marketplace for leftover office furniture, but instead of charging for each item of furniture or equipment customers pay a flat fee to access a bulk quantity of goods. 

The charges are reasonable too: $250 for 15 cubic metres or a three tonne truckload, and customers can then fill up their carts with whatever items they want from the listed furniture.

GFH chief executive Justin Hatchett believes this type of low cost, scalable business model is where the circular economy is evolving to.

“For this to work, and to tackle the environmental problem at the same time, we needed economic incentives to engage with the business on both sides of the marketplace,” he says. “This is why we needed to have a low cost model to move volume.

“It’s rethinking the market dynamics and giving a sustainable mission-led organisation the chance to make a difference, add value, and make money along the way.”