IT and Office furniture waste — The unexpected casualties of COVID???
Article by May Al-Karooni, CEO and Founder
With the restrictions easing and the seasons changing heralding the end of summer holidays, the next big question facing businesses is what does the future of work look like? Big brands like Google and Twitter have already announced that their employees can work from home until summer 2021 and forever respectively, but for others will working from home be the new normal or is it a combination?
Transitioning back to the office comes with layers of complexity including how to rearrange the office to allow for social distancing requirements, how do you keep the area hygienically clean, what does the new normal of co-workers engaging with each other face to face? While there are lots of articles, discussions around how to go back to work safely from the office. There is another consideration regarding the office, and that is the excess furniture and items.
There are numerous reasons why companies might have excess assets:
- They bought employees additional equipment such as IT and furniture to work optimally at home.
- They have decided to downsize and move to a smaller office as they adopt a rotational office work schedule for employees.
- To work safely in the current office environment, applying social distance requirements requires reconfiguration of office layout.
- They are not going back to the office at all.
With only 17.4% of the 53.6 million metric tonnes of electronic waste being collected and recycled in 2019 and waste expected to increase by 70% by 2050, sending excess assets such as monitors, IT equipment and furniture, which can still be used to landfill should be the last option. Alternative options including selling items to recover costs or listing them on marketplaces such as Globechain where the items can be reused either internally in other locations of the organisation or externally with charities and small business that need all the help they can in saving money on office moves / set up costs plus the offset/depreciation on the balance sheet.
Some benefits of listing it on Globechain*:
- Items are typically requested within 24 hours.
- Collection deadline dates can be stipulated.
- Can be used internally for reuse, lending globally or external reuse.
- It is simple and quick.
If you are a business considering moving, downsizing or changing your office environment, we would be happy to help you with the transition.
*Visit www.globechain.com for more information and to list your items.
