Office furniture, like any other fixtures, has a limited lifespan. Eventually, there may come a time when you won’t consider them as useful as before. On such occasions, you may need to buy new pieces of furniture for your office and get rid of the unwanted ones.
You could consider several methods when looking to dispose of chairs, desks, conference tables, and other pieces of office furniture. However, some means like throwing away unwanted items in landfills may harm the environment. This is because wood, metal, and other materials used to make office furniture usually take many years to decompose.
By leaving your unwanted desks, chairs, and tables in a landfill, you’ll be polluting the soil and groundwater because the furniture may have harmful chemicals like lead. In addition, they may also emit soil and ground or surface water contaminants like leachate, especially when it rains. Burning unwanted furniture might not be the best solution either. By doing so, you’ll be releasing toxic gasses such as carbon dioxide, which cause global warming.
Aside from the two methods of disposing of unwanted office furniture mentioned above, there are several other environmentally friendly ways of getting rid of such waste. Read more to know about other alternatives.
Contact A Waste Removal Service
The first option you could consider is to call a waste removal service. This may be advisable, especially if the furniture you have is completely worn out. However, not all companies may be recommendable. When searching for firms to collect unwanted chairs, desks, and tables from your office, ensure that the enterprise uses eco-friendly means of garbage disposal. There are various ways you could verify this information.
For instance, you could call the waste removal company you’d like to work with and ask what methods they use to get rid of the garbage they collect. Alternatively, check the home page of the firm’s website or other pages on their site. Therefore, if you find a company that uses sustainable methods, you can consider working with them.
Donate The Unwanted Furniture
If the unwanted furniture you’d want to get rid of is still in good shape, you could consider donating it to a friend looking to set up a new office in their home. Usually, creating such a work area requires several items, like a monitor, printer, desk, chair, speedy internet, and several other things. All the necessary equipment can be pretty expensive collectively. However, you could save them some money to buy other necessities by offering them your furniture.
Alternatively, donate the pieces of furniture to a local charity organization. This way, you’ll build community goodwill and feel fulfilled for helping others. Moreover, you could also get a tax write-off for the donations, depending on your state. If you don’t know of any charities in your area, consider researching online to find the most reputable ones around you. You could also ask a friend or relative for referrals.
Sell The Unwanted Furniture
You could also sell the unwanted furniture. Start by offering the chairs, desks, or tables to your employees at a discount. Some may want them for their home offices, a friend in need, or to resell for extra cash.
List the unwanted furniture pieces on a website where people sell second-hand goods. They could be useful to remote workers looking for affordable items for their home office. Besides that, enterprises in their initial stages might also require the pieces to save some cash on furniture purchases.
However, ensure you disclose the items’ age, condition, and brand when listing your items on such websites. People buying from these sites often leave feedback once they’ve purchased a product. By being dishonest, you could get negative reviews. Hence, this might make it challenging for you to quickly sell other pieces of furniture you may want to dispose of in the future.
Conclusion
If you have office chairs, tables, desks, and other pieces of furniture that are no longer useful to you, you may be wondering what could be the best ways to get rid of them. As you’ve learned from this article, disposing of the items in a landfill or burning them might not be the best means to consider. Instead, sustainable methods are more recommended.
As provided above, you can sell or donate the pieces of furniture you no longer use if they’re still in good condition. However, if they’re too worn out, call a waste removal company to take the unwanted pieces from your building. However, you must first ensure that the firm uses sustainable waste disposal methods. This way, you be sure that your furniture won’t cause further harm to the environment.
