Month: November 2013

Here’s a pretty typical corporate case study, a project we did with One Workplace in Silicon Valley.

The company, a One Workplace client, was moving to a new campus. They took along the best of their furniture. But when they did a cost:benefit analysis, they decided it was more cost effective to buy new than to disassemble, move, and reassemble the majority of their systems and general office furniture.

With a soft economy and so many corporations downsizing or consolidating, there was no market for the used furnishings. The company prides itself on its Sustainability footprint, so they weren’t going to just throw the stuff away. They called One Workplace for help, and One Workplace got in touch with IRN.

From there is was a straightforward project. The buildings we needed to access were already vacant, and the furniture earmarked for internal redeployment had been removed. The remaining inventory was high quality Steelcase product, which we had no trouble placing with our charitable network.

The only real issue was scale: more than 600 office sets, and a total of more than 6,000 pieces, including more than a thousand boxes of office supplies and small office furnishings (lamps, pen and pencil holders, etc.). We scheduled the project over two weeks: Week One primarily for knockdown of the systems furnishings and load-out of the smaller and freestanding items; Week Two for loading and shipment of the office sets.

The furnishings and supplies were provided to three different IRN charitable partners. Feed the Children took four loads for distribution from their southern California depot to community development projects in the U.S. and overseas. Three loads were shipped to the Fundacion Nuevos Horizontes in El Salvador, and three were packed and shipped to Food for the Poor’s central Caribbean depot in Jamaica, which supplies FFTP relief and development initiatives throughout the Caribbean Basin.

At the end of the day, the company paid about 20% less for reuse than they would have spent on disposal, and they had zero disposal. 100% of their surplus is now redeployed and back in service, where it will remain for years to come.

Saving money by doing the right thing; that’s called alignment of incentives.

Click here to see the full case study.

 

It is not widely known that IRN has one greatest invention.  Like, a physical thing, a product, a real invention.  It is the IRN Tech Double, which is a dual recycling container for batteries and handheld electronics.

It is actually Dana’s invention, but I do the writing and he doesn’t know the password to the Blog.  And I do sit in the next office.  So I’ll just take credit for it.

It is actually, for real, our clients’ invention.  BU and Emerson and a couple of other schools came to IRN with an issue:  the growing number of cell phones, GPS’s, IPods, GameBoys, and dozens of other handheld devices that were showing up in their trash.  Most of these had rechargeable batteries, and rechargeable batteries need to be handled as Universal Waste.  They shouldn’t be thrown out.

Most of these schools were already collecting batteries, but they didn’t want handhelds mixed in their battery bins.  At the same time they didn’t want to be setting out yet another bin for another recyclable material.  They wanted a container that locked, because of the personal information stored on so many handhelds.  They wanted something small enough to set out just about anywhere, but big enough to hold a decent volume.  They wanted it to accept essentially all batteries and handhelds.

So Dana (whoops, I mean, it was me) got out a hole saw and one of Busch Systems’ excellent small recycling containers, and created the Tech Double.  He called Busch and asked if they could turn his hand-carved prototype into a production model, and they did.

The Tech Double is a dual recycling bin, one side for batteries, the other for handheld electronics.  The top is slotted to give a clear message what goes where:  one slot round for batteries, the other wide (wide enough for tablets) and narrow for handhelds.  Inside are two separate containers to receive the different materials.  The top locks to prevent tampering or pilfering discarded items, and the bin can be secured so it doesn’t walk away.  And IRN provides clear, distinctive labels, which can be customized with logos or other identifiers.  Overall dimensions are 16¾” x 12” x 13¼” tall, so the bin can be conveniently set out in almost any location.

The Tech Double is, in fact, a really good invention, that addresses a serious issue, and fills a real need.  A couple of dozen schools are using it now, and all are very, very happy with it.

The Tech Double is available exclusively direct from IRN.  Call 866-229-1962 and ask for Joel Bradford, or get on to the IRN website, www.ir-network.com, and click on “Shop” at the top (you’ll discover we also have a great line of regular recycling containers, as well).