Category: Recycling

I had the opportunity recently to attend a talk by the Chief Sustainability Officer from Keurig Green Mountain, the K-Cup company.  If you’re old enough and from New England, you’ll remember Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which was a smallish sort-of high-end coffee distributor in the 80s and 90s.  In 2000 they had $84 Million in sales, almost all of it from selling coffee in bulk.  Then they had the good fortune to stumble onto the K-Cup, and the good sense to patent it.  And by 2015 Keurig Green Mountain had sales of $4.5 Billion, almost all of it from selling K-Cups and Keurig Machines.   They are, by far, the top-selling brand of coffee in America.  Through the end of 2016 they had sold more than 57 billion K-Cups, and more than 60 million Keurig machines.

They wish to be known for their commitment to Sustainability.  If you go to their website, “Sustainability” is the first word written at the very top of their home page, and their “About Us” is filled with stories of their environmental and social accomplishments.

The talk I attended focused on recycling, and how Keurig Green Mountain was working hard to figure out how to recycle the K-Cup.  The Sustainability person said it was a difficult challenge.  There’s the plastic cup, and the wet coffee, and the top that is aluminum foil and plastic.  It’s not easy to take the top off, because of course it can’t be easy to take the top off, because the last thing you want is the top of your K-Cup coming off in the machine, or in your hands on the way to the trash bin.  The K-Cup is the ultimate single-service, non-recyclable consumer commodity.  In fact, that’s the whole point.  Pre-portioned, spill-proof, no mess, no fuss; use it and throw it away.

There’s an easy solution.  I have it in front of me, here on my desk.  It’s a little K-Cup sized filter, which I bought at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  You fill it with coffee and shut the lid (takes about ten seconds), pop it in your Keurig Machine just like a K-Cup, and when it’s finished brewing you open the lid, dump out the coffee grounds, and rinse the filter (depending on how far to the nearest sink, takes maybe 30 seconds).  And reuse it again, and again, and again.  And again, and again, and again.  Recycling is irrelevant; you can reuse this K-Filter practically forever.

I listened to that talk by the young woman who is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Keurig Green Mountain, and I was grievously tempted to raise my hand and say, “Excuse me, but I have the solution sitting on my desk, a little K-sized filter, which anyone can buy right now at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  Certainly you know about this solution.  Why are you not talking about it?”

I did not ask that question because the honest answer would have been really uncomfortable for that nice young woman.  Because the honest answer, of course, is “We have ridden the K-Cup to become the largest coffee distributor in America.  We control the technology, and so we control whose coffee goes into the K-Cup.  Our coffee, or coffee licensed by us.  Your K-Filter, Mr. Lennon, can be filled with anyone’s coffee.  It would be financial folly to promote a product like that, which cuts Keurig out of the K-Cup.”

She would not have said that, of course.  She would have had a pre-programmed answer to my question.  Whatever it might have been, it would have been equally uncomfortable, because dishonest.

I’m really glad I am not the Chief Sustainability Officer at Keurig Green Mountain, or any other big company.  For those companies, Sustainability is a nice concept, and if it doesn’t hurt sales and profits, and particularly if it can be turned to competitive advantage, then hell yes, they’re all for Sustainability.  But management is responsible to shareholders, and the numbers shareholders see and care most about are measured in dollars – not in pounds of plastic kept out of the landfill, or tons of coffee composted, or pounds of aluminum recycled.  In a profit- and growth-driven economy, that’s just the way it is.  If the goose that’s laying the golden eggs is a dirty goose, and the eggs are dirty eggs, you can hire an egg-polisher and give them a title like “Chief Sustainability Officer.”  But in the end it’s the gold that counts.

In 2017, IRN placed more than 176,000 items of furniture for reuse with U.S. and international nonprofits.  These filled nearly 650 tractor trailers with more than 8,000,000 pounds of furnishings.  In addition, IRN recycled 1,000,000 pounds of furnishings that were unsuitable for reuse.  In a year marked by a long series of natural disasters, furnishings from IRN are playing a vital role in relief and reconstruction efforts from Houston to the Virgin Islands to war-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Where IRN Furnishings Came From in 2017

IRN completed 201 projects in 2017, for 102 organizations, including 42 colleges and universities, 30 corporate clients, 31 elementary and secondary schools and districts, and 10 healthcare and government organizations.  IRN worked in 26 states from Massachusetts to California.

K-12, college, and university projects are IRN’s source of classroom furniture and everything that goes with it – libraries, cafeterias, kitchens, offices, and science labs.  Worldwide, these are the furnishings most needed by IRN’s charitable partners.

Colleges and independent schools provide residential furniture that is needed by the tens of millions of families worldwide who are displaced – casualties of floods, earthquakes hurricanes, and war – and the millions more who don’t have resources to buy basic furnishings.

Corporations supply furniture that fills many roles for IRN charities.  Desks and tables are assimilated into classrooms; storage and file cabinets find use in schools and clinics; seating of all kinds is always much needed.

Where IRN Furnishings Went

The majority of furnishings we handle stay close to home, in the Americas.  In 2017 disaster relief in the southern U.S., Central America, and the Caribbean absorbed a large fraction of furnishings supplied by IRN.  Our largest single destination was Jamaica, which has been a staging area for relief and reconstruction supplies for Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominica, and other islands badly damaged by 2017 hurricanes.  Other major destinations included warehouses in Texas, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Honduras, where IRN furnishings are being plugged directly into relief and reconstruction.

Overall in 2017, some 3.3 million pounds of IRN furnishings went to charities in 28 U.S. states.  Another 3.4 million pounds reached 10 countries in the Caribbean, Central and South America.  More than 1.4 million pounds of IRN furnishings were shipped to Africa, where they were placed in 12 countries.  High shipping costs are a limitation on shipments to Asia, where IRN furnishings found recipients in 5 countries.

IRN works with a large and diverse group of charitable partners.  In 2017 we placed furnishings with 90 different organizations – some who took only a trailer or two, others who took more than 150 trailers.  Our international partners tend to be large relief and development organizations who work in a number of different countries, and who have the necessary expertise and experience to handle the complexities of international shipping, customs, in-country transportation, plus planning and coordination of relief after hurricanes and other natural disasters.  In the U.S. our typical nonprofit partner is much smaller – individual tribal and other schools, Habitat for Humanity ReStores, charitable thrift stores and furniture banks.

What We Shipped

The need for usable furnishings of all types in the U.S. and worldwide is overwhelming – the people who lack but cannot afford furnishings number in hundreds of millions.  Tens of millions more are affected annually by floods, hurricanes, war, and other natural and man-made disasters.  IRN shipped 176,000 items in 2017 – we could work a dozen lifetimes and still put hardly a dent in the worldwide need.

In general, children and students are the greatest beneficiaries of furnishings from IRN.  In 2017 IRN shipped more than 37,000 school and student chairs, more than 22,000 student desks, nearly 12,000 work and activity tables, and more than 10,000 bookshelves and storage cabinets.

Beds and mattresses along with storage, tables, and seating are the most important residential furnishings for disaster relief and community development.  In 2017 IRN more than 65,000 of these items to worldwide charities.

What’s Ahead?

IRN is starting 2018 with our largest project backlog ever at this time of year.  And with the most requests for furnishings that we’ve ever received from our charitable partners.  On many Caribbean Islands, reconstruction from 2017 hurricanes is barely underway.  Even before the disastrous hurricane season, one of our international charitable partners put out a call for 20,000 mattresses in 2018.  In the U.S., thousands of homes remain to be put back together after Hurricane Harvey.  If you have surplus furnishings and you can imagine them being used again, we hope you’ll call.  We’ll make sure they get used, where they are truly needed.

Please get in touch if you have usable furnishings that should be reused and re-loved instead of thrown away, or if you have any questions about IRN, what we do, or how we work.

[contact-form][contact-field label=Name type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=Email type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=Comment/Question type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

The Beginning:  Boston, 2002 

A parking lot filled with furniture.  That was the beginning of IRN’s Reuse Program.

IRN got its start as a recycling cooperative for education and healthcare.  As a coop, we had members, and our role was to take over their loading docks and find a home for all their recyclables:  paper and cardboard, cans and bottles, scrap metal, plastics, computers, fluorescent lamps, and whatever else.

And then furniture.  Boston College called, with a parking lot filled with dormitory furniture.  We looked at it and said, ‘This is good stuff.  Why aren’t you giving it to a halfway house or a homeless shelter, an organization that can use it?’  To which BC replied, ‘We’re in Boston.  Within ten miles there are three dozen schools and 40,000 dorm rooms.  Every one has this same furniture to get rid of, and we’ve filled up every shelter and thrift store in three states.  We just need the stuff to go away.’  So IRN recycled it.

We knew there had to be a better solution.  So we started making calls to national and international nonprofits that provide relief and development on a national or global scale.

But we knew there had to be a better solution, and we started making calls.  Not to local charities, but to national and international organizations that provide relief and development on a large scale.  Perhaps they would be able to use good-quality furniture in the quantities that were available from IRN and our members – hundreds or sometimes thousands of pieces at a time.

There Was Supply and Demand, But No One to Make a Match

What we discovered was a market failure.  There was a huge need among relief organizations for usable furniture – to rebuild after floods and earthquakes, provide families a better home, give students the chance to study at a real desk.  There was more need for furniture than IRN could ever hope to provide.  And on the other side we knew there was a huge supply.

But there was no one to match supply with demand.  Among the generators – that is, the schools with furniture to dispose of –no one had the time and resources to network with the dozens of charities who might be able to use the furniture.  Among the potential recipients no one had the time and resources to contact the thousands of schools that might have usable furniture to offer.  Neither the schools nor the charities had the capability to plan and manage the projects to make the transfer happen – set up moving crews, organize transportation, pack trucks, fill out customs paperwork, track the furniture to its destination.

So millions of pounds of good furniture kept going into dumpsters, and kids kept doing schoolwork on wood planks.

We kept making calls.  We started making matches with the larger charities, and began moving furniture.  In 2002 we shipped two trailers of furniture.  In 2003 we shipped 20.  Then 85 in 2004.  Then 259 in 2005, and from there the program has continued growing.  Starting with those first two trailers in 2002, through mid-2017 IRN has loaded and shipped more than 5,500 trailers filled with furniture.  Expanding beyond our base in higher ed, we now also regularly manage furnishings from corporations, hospitals, and K-12 schools – a total of 535 organizations in 28 states.  We have provided furnishings to more than 125 nonprofit schools and charities in 43 U.S. states and 60 countries around the world.

The Pillars of IRN’s Reuse Program:  Education, Healthcare, Corporations

The need for usable furnishings, among people who simply cannot afford to buy new, is beyond counting.  We could find, pack and ship furniture until Doomsday, and barely put a dent in the need.  Here’s where IRN is most active:

EDUCATION is the best route out of poverty, but it’s hard to get an education when you’re sitting on a dirt floor.  The charities IRN works with are desperate to acquire classroom furniture and everything that goes with it – libraries, cafeterias, science rooms.  K‑12 is the gold standard of all the furniture IRN handles.

If K-12 is gold, HEALTHCARE is platinum.  Anything from a healthcare setting:  patient rooms, doctors’ offices, maternity wards, rehab facilities, operating rooms, lounges, storage and administrative areas.  Out of everything IRN handles, healthcare is the most valuable, most sought after and most desperately needed.

Worldwide, tens of millions of families are displaced – casualties of floods, earthquakes hurricanes, and war.  Millions more live in tin and cardboard shanties.  Here in the U.S. there are millions who don’t have resources to buy basic furnishings.  RESIDENTIAL FURNITURE from colleges, universities, and independent schools makes a vital contribution to rebuilding, or building from scratch.

CORPORATE furniture is a jack-of-all-trades.  IRN provides hundreds of shipments to U.S. nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity ReStores and charitable thrift shops.  Desks and tables are assimilated into classrooms; storage and file cabinets find use in schools and clinics; seating of all kinds is always much needed.  Corporate furnishings don’t have a consistent role.  Like a great utility player, they fill many.

A Thank You

If the world is going to achieve a sustainable future, every organization on the planet will need to live the reality that social and environmental good must coexist with economic success.  IRN was founded on the premise that that outcome is possible – that a company providing social and environmental benefit can survive and thrive in the “real” economy.  Across 15 years now, thanks to the thousands of people and organizations who have helped and supported us along the way (and who we hope have come out ahead – socially, environmentally, and financially), we think we’ve proved that.  For that, to each and every one, we thank you.

Since 2008, Columbia and IRN have worked together to keep more than two million pounds of furnishings out of the landfill.

See more photos of Columbia’s 2017 projects with IRN

We first met Nilda Mesa, head of Columbia’s Sustainability Office, at Greenbuild in 2006.  A little over a year later, in early 2008, came our first opportunity to work together, in a renovation of Columbia’s Faculty House.  There IRN arranged for the reuse of 167 pieces of kitchen equipment, which were provided to communities in Honduras.  Later that year we came back for another 930 items from three Columbia dormitories.  The total for 2008:  1,098 items, 125,000 pounds.

Columbia and IRN have worked together every year since then:  another 1,350 pieces (121,000 lbs) in 2009, 2,300 pieces (212,000 lbs) in 2010, right on to 4,700 pieces (390,000 lbs) in 2017.  Annual totals fluctuate depending on Columbia’s replacement and renovation schedule, but their commitment to reuse remains constant.

IRN’s work with Columbia is only one part of Columbia’s reuse story.  IRN handles Columbia’s largest projects, but Columbia has a parallel program for smaller quantities of surplus furniture, matching them with dozens of local nonprofit organizations.  Between them, the two programs assure that scarcely a single item of usable furniture is thrown away from Columbia’s campus.

How Columbia Does It

Columbia is not an easy place to move large quantities of furniture.  It’s a crowded urban campus in Manhattan.  Parking is always an issue.  Streets are narrow and many are one-way; sometimes just finding room for a truck to turn a corner is an issue.  Many buildings are old, with narrow hallways, small and slow old elevators, or no elevators at all.  There are union-labor restrictions; sometimes one crew must bring furnishings out of a building, then another crew loads our trailers.

After eight years, Columbia and IRN have coordination down to an art.  Typically Columbia removes the furniture from its installed location before IRN arrives, and stages it inside and/or outdoors.  If outdoors, they cover it in plastic if there’s any likelihood of rain.  They use school vehicles, traffic cones, crowd-control barriers, lots of orange flagging, and leather lungs to stake their claim to parking.  When IRN arrives with tractor trailers, Columbia has a locally hired crew ready to load them.  In Manhattan, speed is essential, so Columbia makes sure they have enough men on hand to fill IRN’s trailers quickly and efficiently.

Reuse v Landfill.  Comparing Cost and Efficiency

For Columbia, reuse isn’t just a sustainability commitment.  It’s the most efficient, most cost-effective way to handle their surplus furnishings:

1. Less Traffic, Fewer Delays. Each IRN trailer packed for reuse holds as much as three to four big rolloff containers.  So reuse cuts truck traffic by two- thirds, or more.  On Manhattan streets, every swap of a rolloff box is a complicated, time-consuming exercise.  In contrast, trailers for reuse arrive, park, and then drive away.  There’s much less crew down-time.
2. A Quicker, Safer Project. Each swap of a rolloff box holds the prospect for a truck getting delayed in traffic.  And because haulers have other clients, Columbia sometimes has to wait in line just to get a swap scheduled.  IRN’s trailers, on the other hand, are dedicated to Columbia’s use.  And unlike throwing furniture into dumpsters, packing trailers is a coordinated, orderly process.  So at the same time it’s quicker, reuse gives Columbia a safer, more organized jobsite.
3. Lower Cost. Over and above savings in crew time, on a piece-by-piece or pound-by-pound basis reuse costs Columbia much less than disposal.  A rolloff of furniture disposed in New York costs an average about $800, and holds an average 3,500 pounds of furniture, for a cost of about $0.23/pound.  An IRN trailer packed and dispatched for reuse holds an average 13,000 pounds, and costs Columbia about $0.11/pound.

So Much More Than a Good Idea

Sure, reuse is at the top of the waste management hierarchy.  That makes reuse a good idea.

But reuse is much more:  Reuse helps real people.  In ten years partnering with IRN, Columbia has provided more than 25,000 pieces of furniture that have gone to needy communities.  Columbia’s surplus has been distributed to communities in six Caribbean and Central American countries, and to furniture banks, community development agencies, and Habitat for Humanity ReStores across the country.  Columbia has shipped over 3,000 beds, more than 3,000 desks, more than 6,000 chairs and other seating, 3,000 dressers and wardrobes, nearly 1,800 bookcases, plus file and storage cabinets, dining tables, kitchen appliances, and much, much more.  Every single item is now being used again, by a student or family who didn’t have that piece of furniture before, and couldn’t afford to buy it.  Each is now making a difference in the life of a real person, and will continue to do so for years to come.

 

Please reach us with questions or comments, or to let us know if you have surplus furnishings suitable for reuse.

[contact-form][contact-field label=Name type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=Email type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=Question/Comment type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]