Humanscale is tackling corporate waste with a new furniture recycling program

Reduce, reuse and recycle are the core tenets of managing waste and slowing down climate change, and one company is taking those principles to the next level. 

Sustainable furniture company Humanscale recently launched their Refreshed program, an initiative where they recycle and refurbish their used products and put them back out onto the market. The effort is inspired by the idea of a circular economy, which is when production and consumption focuses on reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible. 

"This concept has been around for a while, but I find that a lot of people just talk about it and get very excited, yet I rarely see it happening in practice," says Jane Abernethy, chief sustainability officer at Humanscale. "And the idea of making things more sustainable is a great idea, but it's not very helpful if it just stays an idea." 

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Office vacancies are expected to peak in early 2026 at approximately 24% of offices nationwide, according to recent research conducted by financial services company Moody's. This is especially concerning when considering the 17 million pounds of office furniture wasted each year, according to a 2018 survey from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Refreshed program was launched in an effort to keep Humanscale furniture from contributing to an existing problem, while also spreading awareness. 

Through their Refresh program, past Humanscale customers are encouraged to return their old chairs to the retailer's factory to get "refreshed." The process differs depending on the wear and tear of the product, but ultimately, in addition to a thorough cleaning, Humanscale will replace damaged or worn out parts with new and improved parts from their warehouse. The refreshed chair will then either be sold back to the client or sold to a new client on their site. 

"We've worked with long-lasting, sustainable materials for a long time, and we designed them easily swapped out and replaced," Abernethy says. "We decided that this might be a great opportunity to get these materials back and see if we could make good on our promises and make circularity happen for real." 

In the future, Humanscale would like to further this venture by trying to make even the production of replacement parts as sustainable as possible, grinding down the parts that were deemed too old or too broken to keep and using them to make the replacements. But for now, the retailer started with a "refreshed" version of their signature Freedom model, which is already on sale on the company's site, with the goal of expanding until they have several refreshed models up for sale simultaneously. 

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"We want to give these products a second life, then ideally continue for a third and fourth," Abernethy says. "We'll try to keep that going indefinitely, but first we need a starting point." 

Abernethy and her team are aware that not every company has the means to refresh their own furniture, but that doesn't mean they can't make changes that have similar impacts. When thinking about furnishing office spaces, Abernethy urges organizations to think of second-hand options as opposed to contributing to the waste problem by buying brand new appliances and furniture. On the flip side, if they're downsizing, Abernethy suggests donating the used furniture to third-party organizations that can repurpose or rehome it.  

"The volume of waste is really astronomical," Abernethy says. "If companies pay attention to how their spaces are being used and how they're handling their real estate, it can be a really big part of improving their carbon footprint."