Labelling for making office moves sustainable

The Sustainable Interior project is an initiative from the interior architecture studio, Indicum that is being carried out in collaboration with another architectural firm, tenants, the manufacturing industry, interior furnishing suppliers, Nordic Swan Ecolabel, RISE, Sweden Green Building Council (SGBC) and IT companies. 

“For quite some time, we have been lacking the guidance needed for being able to carry out our work in the best possible way, from an environmental and climate perspective. We work with major projects and make many choices that have a potential environmental impact,” says Kristin Östberg, CEO at Indicum. 

This is a Challenge Driven Innovation project funded by Vinnova, which supports collaborative projects that, in the long term, work to solve societal challenges to contribute to the sustainability goals of Agenda 2030.  

Need for labelling systems with an overall approach 

There is a need for environmental labelling that focuses on what is inside a building, besides just the furniture. A building can obtain environmental certification from Sweden Green Building Council, LEED and BREEAM. Its various furnishings might also have the Nordic Swan Ecolabel. But, there is no single label covering every component (e.g. roof, floors, windows, doors, lighting, toilets, kitchen, etc.) and the sum of total of each of those parts. 

“These are parts that a new tenant will frequently replace when they take over a lease and that has a negative environmental impact. Consideration should also be given to whether or not there is a future-oriented floor plan, so that a need for conversion or renovation doesn’t arise after just a couple of years. Other factors that should enter into the calculation are how the premises are used over a 24-hour period and the extent to which the entire facility is used,” says Kristin Östberg.

For tenant adaptations, reuse has a major impact 

There has not been much research conducted on the environmental impact of interiors. However, a report from IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute shows that the reuse of desks, desk chairs and glass sections has the largest impact on carbon dioxide emissions when premises are adapted for new tenants. If Swedish offices were to reuse desks and office chairs, glass sections, interior doors, floor, ceiling absorbers, visitor chairs and planters, the potential annual decrease in carbon emissions could, according to the report, be as much as 43,000 tonnes. 

Circular design has thus become a concept in this context. It covers the reuse and remanufacturing of existing furnishings, along with manufacturing new office furniture products with modularity, disassembly, and life extension as core design principles, for example.  

“Before long, it will be unacceptable for everything to be new in conjunction with an office move. Focus will be on quality and a long-term perspective instead. For that, you need to bring in the right expertise that can provide guidance,” says Kristin Östberg.  

Sustainable Interior consists of two parts. One is a tool for facilitating sustainable purchasing of interior furnishings. The other is certification for ensuring that an interior design project is carried out in a sustainable way. 

“The digital tool will be very helpful for those working with procurement of furniture and furnishings. They will be able to carry out a procurement that follows the criteria, without needing in-depth knowledge on the details of sustainability,” says Kristin Östberg. 

Logic of the evaluation  

RISE has been responsible for the scientific basis for criteria selection and creating the logic that will be used for evaluation of an interior.  

“When a tenant moves into office premises, they typically gut the entire building and throw away all of the furnishings to start with a clean slate. It’s hardly what you would call sustainable. The logic that we are working with takes into account the extent to which the existing interior is preserved or reused, the existing furniture and the working methods that are chosen to run the premises,” says Derek Diener, Senior Researcher at RISE and project manager for developing the criteria. 

For quite some time, RISE has been successfully working with circular furniture flows and has published several articles on how to measure circularity in a way that is linked to sustainable production and circular business models. 

Hope for legislation 

For the furniture industry, the future labelling system means that companies working with reuse and remanufacturing will be positively affected, as well as those who have based their business on circular design. It is also likely that local production will benefit over imports. 

Kristin Östberg hopes that it will become law for furniture to have a standardized Environmental Product Declaration, where the information is primarily based on an life cycle analysis of the product.  

“EPDs will make it much easier to assess the environmental impact of a piece of furniture,” she says. 

During the late autumn of 2021, a pilot project on Sustainable Interior has been run to test the established criteria using stakeholders who work with interior design projects. The purpose is to check that the theory is consistent with reality. It is expected that the digital tool will be ready during spring 2022 for testing and refinement. 

“The project will be formally completed in March 2023, but I hope and believe that we will have the documentation we need to start certification already by fall 2022,” says Kristin Östberg.