December 1, 2025
Moving Across the Country? Here’s How to Plan
Moving across the country is exciting: a new job, a new city, a new chapter. But it’s also a challenge that tests your planning skills (an...
When your mission is to build a cleaner energy future, sustainability must show up in your everyday decisions.
As an alternative energy firm, the pressure is on to lead by example. Often, that means thinking beyond production and taking a look at how your internal operations reflect the same values. Do you source, function, and scale responsibly?
One of the most commonly overlooked opportunities is the actual physical space where your team works. More specifically, one of the most commonly overlooked opportunities is your workplace furniture.
Buy, use, and dispose is no longer the right approach for an industry that prides itself on innovation and leadership. Circular workplace strategies, such as renting furniture and fixtures instead of buying them, provide you with a tangible way to reduce waste, shrink your impact on the environment, and turn your workplace design into a symbol of your company’s commitment to sustainability.
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) stakeholders’ expectations have expanded beyond simple energy production. They’re also concerned with responsible operations across every department, from purchasing to facilities management.
Furniture may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you’re trying to move the needle, but the numbers tell a different story about this often overlooked area.
Think about this: According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 12.1 million tons of furniture waste are generated annually in the United States. Over two-thirds of that, around 8.5 million tons, come from offices alone. Less than 1% is recycled, and it costs the country $455 million each year to simply landfill it.
The problem is traditional, linear, purchase-and-dispose models. They’re outdated, and they clash with circularity goals and modern sustainability mandates. You buy furniture, use it for a few years, and then pay to haul it off to a landfill. It’s a one-way lifecycle toward an environmental nightmare.
Furniture rental changes everything. It keeps assets in circulation, diverting them away from landfills and dramatically reducing unnecessary waste and manufacturing. It’s a single procurement decision that can prove invaluable to your company.
Most bid packages for sustainable buildings include pages devoted to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, energy systems, and green materials. What they don’t mention is a plan for what happens to that one-and-done furniture you purchase when your space expands, changes, or is decommissioned.
ESG planning documents rarely mention furniture lifecycle models, circularity roadmaps, or return strategies, which only creates hidden waste and cost burdens.
But CORT’s Furniture-as-a-Service (FaaS) closes the gap with its circular model that integrates reuse, refurbishment, and redeployment. It reduces your environmental impact without compromising comfort or function.
Through our FaaS program, furniture becomes a managed service rather than a burden on the planet or a stranded asset when projects needs grow and shift. As a matter of fact, it keeps 95% or more furniture in circulation, reducing Scope 3 emissions tied to manufacturing and disposal.
For your alternative energy company, the benefits exceed sustainability. New setups aren’t just eco-friendly, they’re also easier to manage, freeing up your team to focus on your actual operations.
Facility managers do not need to talk about sustainability and procurement in separate conversations, especially as more and more procurement professionals have ESG key performance indicators (KPIs) tied to their vendor choices.
Furniture rental serves both purposes while reducing capital expenditures.
By renting, your furnishings become a part of a predictable operational budget that aligns with the project-based financing that is common in the energy industry. You also eliminate the need for storage, asset tracking, disposal, and other burdens down the road.
Partnering with CORT means supporting your ESG goals by tracking metrics, simplifying logistics, and offering flexible contracts. The result is access to measurable environmental outcomes that you can take to your investors and auditors.
Whether you’re opening up a wind farm ops center, expanding your headquarters, setting up a temporary site, or modernizing your engineering department, workspaces in the alternative energy sector must evolve quickly and sustainably. Furniture rental helps you remain flexible and responsive.
All of CORT’s rental packages support LEED and WELL Building Standard goals and come with integrated return planning.
In one real-world case, a client inherited five floors of untagged furniture with no reuse plan. Instead of turning to disposal, CORT helped rebuild a circular map, tagging and tracking every asset for reuse, resale, or donation. Disposal became the last resort, not the first. And the client’s business became a sustainability success story.
Sustainability is about how you operate, not just what you power. CORT’s circular furniture model offers alternative energy firms a scalable, ESG-forward way to furnish smarter, reduce waste, and reinforce their environmental mission with every square foot. Take the next step toward a greener future—partner with CORT to create workspaces that reflect your values and reduce your footprint.
