When you look at our office resale website you will see that we capture the embodied carbon of all items we sell on the site. When we use the term ‘embodied carbon’ we are referring to the carbon saved by using refurbished and reused furniture from Crown Workspace’s services, as opposed to buying new. In other words, it includes any CO₂(and equivalent greenhouse gases) created during the manufacturing process of an item before it becomes operational. By calculating the embodied carbon of a piece of furniture or IT, we can see exactly how much carbon is saved by refurbishment instead of purchasing a new item. We have achieved this using various reliable data sources, such as FIRA and WRAP for furniture or WRAP and the WeCycle Project for IT and an external data base we have built based on the materials and energy used in the refurbishment process.
Collating data and evidence is really important to us and we are intent on continually improving the data we use, which is why we have produced our own set of statistics on the embodied carbon of each type of furniture, as advised by our carbon consultant. We are hugely proud of what we achieve at our office resale site by refurbishing and adding new life to furniture that would otherwise go to waste. If you would like more information about our sustainable initiatives, please see our sustainability report which outlines our achievements so far and our plans for the future.
The process we use involves splitting up items of furniture by category based on their materials and construction. From there, we are able to attribute a carbon saving to the item by using the trusted data sources previously mentioned. Carbon savings are also calculated for each item based on how it is remanufactured, such as desk re-sizing, re-topping and re upholstery of chairs. A very similar process is used for IT, where emissions associated with the reconditioning process are accounted for in the avoided emissions.
