Furniture Village profits from ‘easier’ waste handling

Furniture Village has reported significant cost and carbon savings from using ergonomically designed on-site waste compactors at five of its retail outlets.


The compactors, supplied by Greenbank, are purpose-built and customised to enable them to be sited on top of block paving. According to Furniture Village’s group warehousing manager Andy Long, results have been so good that the company is considering buying more of the machines.

He said: “Unwanted furniture is a difficult waste stream to dispose of, which is why we are one of only a few retailers to offer this service. Our previous compactors were labour-intensive to load … whereas the new ones have a wider opening, allowing whole pieces of furniture such as three-piece suites and double beds to be easily put into them.”

Each compactor holds the same amount of waste as the equivalent of five skips, improving the site environment and reducing skip collections from once a week to monthly.

Furniture Village works closely with a number of charities to reuse and recycle wherever possible, but a proportion of its waste still gets sent to landfill.

Maxine Perella

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