With PreZero, Sedus has brought a real recycling expert on board. The full-service environmental service provider aims to conserve resources along the entire value chain and promote holistic cycles with its services.
Uncomplicated handling of disposal
The take-back service offers Sedus customers the opportunity to have the disposal of used visitor and swivel chairs in particular (but also including office desks) handled simply and easily. After ordering the collection of the old inventory via Sedus, a collection date is arranged by PreZero. The customer doesn’t have to worry about the logistics and saves a lot of time and effort.
Another benefit: the offer applies not only to discarded Sedus products, but to all old office furniture. Avoided emissions can then be credited to a project as part of the life cycle assessment, which reduces its carbon footprint.
Simon Roquette, Head of Sustainability at Sedus, answered a few questions about the take-back offer:
How did the collaboration with PreZero come about?
“We were looking for a professional partner who is well connected in Germany, as the disposal should also take place as locally as possible.”
Why should Sedus customers not hesitate to make use of the take-back offer?
“Because we believe it is currently the biggest lever for optimising the carbon footprint and therefore the environmental balance of projects. With our CO₂ balancing, we are also able to quantify the savings.”
What requirements must be met in order to make use of the offer?
“In principle, our take-back can be utilised at any time, but this has an impact on profitability depending on the scope. Experience to date shows that from a quantity of 200 identical chairs, cost-neutral processing becomes realistic.”
What are the advantages of the take-back service compared to conventional product disposal?
“In the conventional way, metals are usually recycled and other materials are thermally utilised, i.e. incinerated. With our take-back, the plastic is given a second life. In the last project, we were able to recycle 500 kg of plastic from 200 chairs.”
Successful pilot project
A pilot project has also shown that the take-back programme not only avoids emissions in theory: This involved manually dismantling 189 Sedus chairs (70 seconds/chair) and then handing the parts over to local waste disposal companies.
The result: with a recovery rate of up to 79% recycled material, the recycling of 520 kg of plastic, the avoidance of approx. 3,000 kg of CO₂, which is the CO₂ equivalent of 39 new swivel chairs, and the avoidance of international waste transport, the pilot project was a complete success!
We look forward to more and more customers making use of our take-back offer in the future. Please do not hesitate to contact us to find out more.
