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Volume 1, August 2011 |
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Fast Facts: Refurbished Cubicles: a Green Choice. The use of cubicles in office space can allow more people to work comfortably in a smaller space — 75 square feet, at last count, for the average American office cubicle user. Using less floor space automatically reduces the resources required for each individual worker, since energy use increases in larger spaces. The lack of walls reduces energy use further, since all the workers in the larger space can share light and heat or air conditioning. Consider the raw materials needed for those walls in the first place, and cubicles are clearly a greener choice.
If you’re thinking of using cubicles in your office for the sake of reducing your carbon footprint, you should take the next logical step and go with used cubicles. Certainly, any time you can reuse rather than buying new, you’re conserving resources. If you can make use of something that would otherwise have to be disposed of, you’ve doubled the benefits: fewer natural resources consumed, and less waste ending up in the landfill.
For cubicles, though, there’s an extra layer, because good quality cubicles are made of steel. Mark Miller, COO of EthoSource, a used furniture company in the Northeast, says that his company chooses Herman Miller cubicles for their refurbished cubicles. “Those things are built like tanks, “says Miller. “They last forever.”
The strength of the steel is matched by the environmental impact of producing new steel:
Fortunately, recovering a used cubicle creates a cubicle that is essentially new: the only parts of the cubicle that are visible to the users are in fact new.
With the substantial savings that used cubicles offer, there is no reason to hesitate to make the green choice when it comes to cubicles.
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