The new partnership will change the way commercial furniture is managed, renewed, and repurposed to reduce waste and keep valuable materials in use.
RESEAT, a leader in sustainable, second-life furniture solutions and a SaaS (software as a service) inventory management platform is partnering with the Cradle to Cradle Products Institute, (C2C) a leader in advancing safe, circular and responsible product design. This collaboration aims to establish new industry benchmarks for sustainable furniture, enhancing the circular economy by promoting products designed for durability, recyclability and reduced environmental impact.
Unwanted office furniture has been a landfill issue for decades. This is not just a post-Covid concern. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, about 17 billion pounds office assets end up in landfills every year.
Returning Office Space at the End of the Lease
For decades, the conventional approach, at the end of the lease term, was for an office space to be returned to the landlord empty. A furniture liquidator was engaged to remove the furniture and other office assets, perhaps retaining a few high profile/designer pieces, or conducting an employee sale, with some going to an aftermarket, but the majority destined for the landfill.
More recently, we called this end of lease-dispose of the office furniture process decommissioning. A third party brokered the sale and/or donation of unwanted furniture, appliances, and other office assets. The devil was always in the details of understanding the product quantities/specifications and the original value. Most organizations have not maintained a comprehensive inventory of their furniture, making the reuse, sale, or donation of these assets more difficult.
Now, there are a many inventory management software options that will manage, resell and dispose of physical furniture, but first there is generally some sort of input process to catalogue asset data. And often, there are few records of furniture purchased years before. This data challenge is solved by RESEAT’s pre-project process.
Digital Product Passports
The RESEAT and C2C partnership is significant because their Digital Product Passports (DPP) establish the inventory of furniture products up front, with all the pertinent information for each item. DPPs enable project teams to think about the end in the beginning and to have a plan.
An intuitive inventory management platform, RESEAT allows the management of furniture assets across all locations in real time with the ability to move, donate, sell, renew, reorder your furniture-all while knowing your carbon footprint.
Our process…captures the order information at the time of purchase…creating a “second-life cycle passport.
— Brandi Susewitz, RESEAT, CEO
WDM: What exactly are Digital Product Passports and why do they make office furniture more circular?
Brandi Susewitz: A RESEAT ID, also known as a digital product passport, is a unique identifier assigned to a piece of commercial furniture. It serves as a comprehensive digital record that tracks and stores key information about the furniture throughout its lifecycle. This is probably the single most important thing that users must do in order to combat the contract furniture waste problem because most companies do not have a comprehensive inventory of what they own. This makes it nearly impossible to sell because you don’t know what you can make somewhere else.
Features of the RESEAT ID / Digital Product Passport:
- Detailed Product Information: Includes manufacturer details, model, dimensions, materials used, and date of production.
- Ownership History: Tracks previous owners and locations, creating a transparent chain of custody.
- Condition & Maintenance Records: Logs updates like repairs, refinishing, or reupholstering via the RENEW function.
- Sustainability Metrics: Highlights the environmental benefits of reusing the item, such as landfill diversion stats and carbon savings.
- Resale Readiness: Prepares items for a circular economy by making them easier to list for resale or renewal in RESEAT’s marketplace.
Benefits of a Digital Product Passport:
- Promotes Circularity: Makes it easier to reuse, resell, or refurbish furniture, extending its lifecycle.
- Improves Value: Detailed history can increase the resale value of second-life furniture.
- Simplifies Management: Businesses and dealers can efficiently track their inventory, making informed decisions about redeployment, renewal, or resale.
Furniture Product Certifications
WDM: How will the RESEAT and C2C partnership work with existing and new product certifications?
Brandi Susewitz: The partnership between RESEAT and C2C enhances and complements existing product certifications while creating new opportunities for innovation in circular design and sustainability.
The impact on existing product certifications provides a digital infrastructure that integrates with existing C2C certifications, adding traceability and lifecycle data. This reinforces the value of previously certified products by:
- Highlighting their material health, recyclability, and circular potential.
- Enabling continuous tracking of the product’s condition and history.
- Verifing circularity goals with real-time monitoring and documentation of a product’s adherence to its original circular design intentions.
- Facilitating renewal and resale by aligning C2C certification with RESEAT’s renewal and resale capabilities for products to maintain their value and usability over multiple life cycles.
For new product certifications, the process is streamlined as manufacturers can use data captured within the RESEAT platform to expedite documentation including material sourcing, production methods and lifecycle planning. Circular design is incentivized for manufacturers as the RESEAT ecosystem optimizes reuse, refurbishment, and recycling. Insights into second-life markets can positively influence the design of future products to meet circular economy demands.
WDM: What are the broader industry implications of RESEAT and C2C partnership and DPPs?
Brandi Susewitz: We see three market forward impacts to reducing furniture landfill with the use of DPPs.
- Standardization of Circular Practices: By bridging the gap between certification bodies and lifecycle management, this partnership drives industry-wide adoption of standardized circular practices.
- Increased Market Value for Certified Products: Products with integrated DPPs and C2C certification gain a competitive edge, as they offer tangible proof of sustainability and circularity to end-users, specifiers, and corporations.
- Sustainability Metrics Reporting: Both existing and new certifications gain more robust data support, aiding in ESG reporting and compliance for all stakeholders.
To support organizations with global facilities, RESEAT IDs/DPPs will soon be expanding internationally to support customers with locations outside of the US and Canada.
Guidelines for Getting Started
WDM: Outline how the various stakeholders have a role in driving circular economy standards in the commercial furniture industry.
Brandi Susewitz: One’s role in the process impacts their purpose, motivation and benefits. Here’s an outline of the major stakeholders’ purpose and interactions.
Manufacturers drive circular design and lifecycle accountability by creating comprehensive DPPs during manufacturing. Inclusion of material composition, certifications, lifecycle continuity planning, renewal and take-back programs strengthen brand credibility with tangible proof of sustainability.
Products maintain their relevance and value through multiple life cycles.
Specifiers including Interior Designers and Architects make informed decisions aligned with the project’s sustainability goals. Using DPPs verifies credentials and provides clients with data on the environmental benefits in a cost-effective readily available timeframe.
Specifiers recommend products with high circular value to clients seeking ESG alignment.
Furniture Dealers bridge manufacturers and end-users by providing detailed product data for resale, renewal and end-of-life planning. Integrating RESEAT’S white-label platform to manage product inventories, adds real-time lifecycle updates and guidance on sustainability compliance.
Dealers build trust/loyalty and gain recurring revenue streams via furniture lifecycle services.
Corporate End Users manage furniture assets responsibly while meeting ESG goals. Utilizing DPPs will manage inventory, track product conditions, and facilitate informed decisioning about resale, renewal, or recycling. Leveraging DPP data for sustainability metrics, such as carbon footprint reduction and landfill diversion cut costs through resale and renewal options.
Organizations enhance brand reputation by embracing circular economy principles
ESG Auditors and Certification Bodies validate and report on sustainability practices. Integrating DPPs to confirm compliance with C2C certification and other ESG standards, ensures alignment with sustainability goals and circular economy metrics. Robust data-driven verification services are provided by the DPPs.
Audits and certifications enhance corporate accountability through detailed lifecycle tracking.
Decommissioning Agents optimize end-of-life furniture management by accessing material compositions and certifications to make efficient decisions about recycling, resale, or donation. DPPs can be updated with final disposition data, such as resale details and recycling statistics to streamline the process.
Circularity is enhanced by ensuring products and materials are responsibly repurposed or recycled.
Recycling Partners enable responsible material recovery. Integrating DPP documentation enables efficient recycling, ensuring the right processes for material separation and recovery. Circular reporting contributes to improved material recovery outcomes, with increased resource recovery rates.
DPPs support sustainability claims with transparent documentation.
We are accelerating the transformation of the contract furniture industry…designing with circularity in mind and end-of-life systems that power the circular economy.
— Elwyn Grainger Jones, Executive Director of C2C
A Little Bit of Forethought Can End a Lot of Waste!
By working together, RESEAT and the Cradle-to-Cradle Products Institute will foster standards and practices that prioritize the full lifecycle of commercial furniture, from design to disposal. The partnership will support RESEAT’s goal of reducing waste and carbon emissions associated with office furniture, ensuring that materials can be continually reused, refurbished, or recycled instead of being sent to landfills.
