Office equipment disposal
Rheaply puts reuse on the table for every organization.
Office equipment disposal
With many office locations closing as their workforce goes fully remote, office equipment decommissioning is happening more frequently than ever. It’s a task easier said than done – especially in large offices that used to see hundreds of employees per day. When handling office equipment disposal for hundreds of employees, it isn’t as simple as setting the old furniture out on the curb or driving it to the city’s recycling center. However, even if you’re dealing with just a few dozen desks or other office furniture, procurement managers have a few avenues to consider when it comes to disposal.
Reselling office equipment
Procurement managers may attempt to sell office furniture, especially if it’s in good condition. Some local employees may even be interested in buying the furniture for their home offices. However, reselling can be difficult in higher quantities because there are few reliable solutions for businesses to list and manage their equipment for sale. Managers run the risk of getting rid of only a few pieces of furniture or becoming something like an auctioneer for their unused assets, getting tied up in managing the sale of bits and pieces.
Donating office equipment
Donating materials can be a viable avenue for some organizations and some equipment, but for many businesses it is not an option. It is usually not the most cost-effective method and requires a lot of administrative work to allocate resources to find the best cause for donation, inventory, and transportation. Many charitable organizations have need for equipment that is commonly used in office settings. However, this can require finding a specialty charity or splitting the assets up over many different organizations, which can be difficult to manage.
Recycling office equipment
Did you know that 80% of used furniture arrives at landfills every year? That’s 9.6 million tons of furniture with a lot of life left – tossed away. Recycling office equipment can have its challenges – but it doesn’t have to. If you’re wondering how to dispose of office equipment in a way that is cost-effective, efficient, and sustainable – Rheaply has a solution for you.
Rheaply is one such example of a company that offers services to help businesses dispose of underutilized and surplus resources and reuse them in a way that’s most efficient. We work with re-manufacturers like Envirotech and The Furniture X-Change to help sustainably sell or donate your surplus office furniture.
Office equipment recycling
Business equipment recycling takes a little bit more effort than transporting to the landfill – but not by much, and the benefits are far greater. With over 9.6 tons of used furniture entering landfills each year, office equipment recycling is just one step that organizations can take to mitigate their impact on the environment and local communities. Recycling equipment and office furniture could also be the first step in entering a circular economy with your business that minimizes waste and maximizes efficiency.
Organizations looking to offset their carbon footprint and make good use of old or unused equipment can use Rheaply’s resource exchange platform to reallocate their old resources and find new ones that suit their needs. Organizations join a network of businesses and organizations across industries that are seeking to exchange materials, either out of necessity or to comply with a Sustainability Action Plan.
Rheaply’s platform even simplifies the process of reallocating assets from one location to another. It takes inventory management to the next level and helps procurement managers identify opportunities for reuse and recycling. Rheaply also offers on-site support to your teams on location to create successful programs that drive visibility, utilization, and exchange of your existing resources.
Old office equipment recycling becomes simple with the Rheaply platform. Procurement managers can create listings individually or in bulk. They can also select whether they’d like to circulate the equipment within their own organization or exchange with a trusted external partner network.
Decommissioning office furniture can have one of the heaviest tolls on the environment. Office furniture can also be one of a business’s starting points for creating a sustainable action and reuse plan. The asset exchange platform allows organizations to discover how much revenue they can recapture through exchanged resources and extend the lifetime of their assets, reducing their carbon footprint. For organizations that must keep track of their emissions or already adhere to a sustainability plan, Rheaply can provide administrative assistance and streamline existing sustainability processes.
Selling business equipment
One of the biggest challenges of decommissioning and disposing of assets is knowing where to sell business equipment. While many processes are dependent on scale, selling business equipment can be done on a variety of sites, apps, and outlets. The best part about using these platforms to sell used furniture is that it goes both ways. They could also be used to purchase used furniture or other equipment that reduce waste, carbon emissions, and costs.
While buying and selling through consumer apps like Facebook or Craigslist may be possible for smaller sets of furniture, fixtures, or equipment, it ramps in difficulty with the scale. Additionally, because the sale is done online, it is often impossible to know the true quality of the items until after they are already purchased. Fraud on Facebook Marketplace in particular is common, and therefore, buying and selling with popular online platforms is sometimes more trouble than its worth.
Furniture liquidators, auction houses, and resale stores are other methods of buying and selling business equipment. These are particularly useful when looking to offload or purchase larger volumes of furniture. Furniture liquidators typically offer new or like-new furniture, while resale stores may offer a mixture of used and new furniture. While these are useful avenues for buying, it may be slightly more difficult to sell furniture to locations like these because they typically have more steady suppliers. Charitable organizations such as Habitat for Humanity may be an option for offloading used furniture, however, it is unlikely to recover any costs associated with the furniture.
Rheaply has all the positives of buying and selling online without the associated risks of fraud. Not only that, the resource exchange platform enables organizations to keep better tabs on their existing inventory and its condition so they can plan ahead for exchange. Rheaply’s platform empowers businesses to maximize the use of their current inventory. It also gives them the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint and participate in sustainable practices for the benefit of their business, community, and environment. Rheaply can also offer organizations the ability to purchase the resources they need at a far reduced cost compared to the price of brand-new assets.
Buying used equipment for business
Buying used business equipment can reduce costs and promote sustainable practices within your organization. This can become a great success story for your business, employees, and community. The impact of buying used furniture cannot be overstated, with over 17 billion pounds of used furniture added to landfills in the U.S. every year.
There can be a lot of incentives to buy used office equipment. The cost of used office equipment compared to new office equipment is much lower. It’s important to select equipment that is still in usable condition, however. That’s where the Rheaply platform comes in handy. Equipment can be tagged according to condition, so you’re always searching for the equipment that is most relevant to you.
Buying used equipment for businesses reduces your organization’s carbon footprint. Carbon emissions are not only caused by burning fossil fuel and flying planes. Carbon is all around us, and it’s built into everything that we use. The carbon cost of the products we use and the homes and offices we build is called “embodied carbon.” When we purchase new furniture instead of reusing or purchasing refurbished furniture, we’re participating in an unsustainable carbon cycle. Electing for used furniture instead has a mitigating impact on that carbon cycle and extends the lifetime of the purchased furniture. Rheaply makes it easy to find and purchase used furniture from trusted network partners.
Buying used furniture can also serve as a jumping-off point for building more sustainable practices into your business’s foundation. Rheaply can be used to track and manage your organization’s carbon footprint through the resources you choose to purchase and recycle. Its advanced inventory management system empowers organizations with clear visibility into their existing assets and collaborate with resource exchange partners to reallocate when the time comes. Rheaply also makes it easy to quantify your climate impact with detailed reporting dashboards.
