Evolve chooses a circular furniture program

Evolve is happy to have initiated the sustainability work, it is a large field and an occasionally vague term. You don't always know what it is, but at the same time, you know how important it is. Evolve started the sustainability work earlier this year, without quite knowing where to start.

The more we work and learn about sustainability and raise our competence, the more we realize that we have a great need for a sustainability strategy. We need a concrete plan for all the measures we want to implement to realize our vision, says the operations manager at Evolve Merlinda Dresh.

Now Evolve is working hard to bring in an external consultant who can provide the right guidance and advice so that we can establish the right measures and sustainability strategy. On top of this, the need to rethink furniture also arose.

Furniture as a bottleneck

Evolve hoped for a supplier who could responsibly recycle the furniture and at the same time give the furniture new life.

We quickly realized that we needed a proactive supplier that gave us a lot of flexibility, especially after the pandemic and its impact on everyday office life. We dreamed of being part of a circular economy, where our furniture came from and went to recycling, continues Dresh.

The Norwegian Environment Agency defines a circular economy as the opposite of a linear economy. Where a linear economy is based on the extraction, production, use, and incineration of waste - a circular economy will mean that the products last as long as possible. The furniture is repaired, upgraded, and used again by new owners. If the products can no longer be reused, the waste must be able to be recycled and used as raw materials in new production. A circular economy is therefore about using the same resources several times and that as little as possible is lost. Evolve quickly realized that to grow at the desired pace, furniture becomes a major bottleneck.

With the growth we have and the standard we set for our office centers, we must have good furniture that the tenants are satisfied with. We quickly realized that we did not have enough knowledge about how to store and treat the furniture we owned ourselves. Therefore, we needed a supplier who understood this challenge and could help us with the furniture logistics in the most responsible way possible.

Martela for tomorrow's office?

The furniture manufacturer Martela started as a Finnish family business in 1945. At the time, it was about adapting the offices to the A4 sheets. Since then, workstations have changed a lot. Most recently the covid-19 pandemic threw everyday office life into a new upheaval. Martela has grown a lot since its inception, both in the number of people and in the level of ambition. Today, Martela is more than just a furniture manufacturer. Operations manager Dresh is satisfied that they are an active partner in their customers' processes, from idea to concept and maintenance.

When we saw that Martela could offer WAAS (Workplace As A Service), it was exactly what we were looking for. Workplace As Service is a furniture rental agreement with an extremely high degree of flexibility. In such an agreement, we get the opportunity to take in or take out furniture that does not work or for various reasons no longer meets expectations. It allows us to replace a piece of furniture with something else, with a clear conscience. The furniture is not thrown away but leased or sold to someone else who can benefit much more from it than we did.

The fact that Martela offers circular rental programs for its furniture means for Evolve that the furniture in our over 25 office centers is rented and after a period of use - when we no longer need it, Martela repairs the furniture before it is rented out to other lucky people. If the furniture is not suitable for new users, Martela uses the materials in further production.

Our furniture lives on with others, while other people's furniture lives on with us today. It allows us to renew, without it harming the environment as much as producing new furniture does. We were able to cover all our needs, with a modern look for our offices and the flexibility we want.

What do they offer Evolve?

Martela can be proactive and see what the actual need is further ahead, and develop the furniture that is needed precisely in tomorrow's office.

Martela is simply the perfect supplier for tomorrow's office. They can work with product development so they are at the forefront. It's about comfort and a new way of solving what offices are. In addition, they are on the ball when it comes to sustainability.

Sustainability is a concept that is here to stay. It is a problem that we cannot solve overnight, but something that our generation and many generations after us will have to live with.

Tomorrow is sustainability. Fact that the future is so dependent on absolute all the choices we make today, it is extremely good to know that there is a plan for all the furniture we choose to take out of our offices. They become part of a circular economy where the furniture is reused elsewhere or recycled. It's great to know, concludes Dresh.

Dreams of setting extremely strict requirements for the entire supply chain.

Evolve is outside the world of production, so the dream scenario is to set extremely strict requirements for suppliers throughout the supply chain to the point where every single material used in the development of the offices can be traced.

We want to get to the point where we set strict requirements for our growth so that we ensure the sustainable establishment of new centers. In the long term, we want to set strict requirements for all our suppliers to ensure that all links in the supply chain produce, operate and grow in a sound and sustainable manner. Concludes operations manager, Merlinda Dresh.

Curious to face tomorrow with Evolve?

We believe that flexibility in the office is about adapting your need for an office to the company's development. With our products: flex, base, and team, we can follow your growth curve and guarantee good offices at all times - for old and new employees in large and small companies. Each of our leases includes available flex spaces and meeting rooms at our 25 offices around Norway. And you, when we talk about flexibility, it's also important to mention that our standard leases only have a 1-3 month notice period 😉

You can always call or send us an email, so maybe we can arrange a non-binding viewing over a chat!