Putting Sustainability at the Heart of the Classroom

Sustainable design and the use of recycled materials in furniture have been hot topics over the last few years, and it has become increasingly important for schools and other educational settings to ensure that the whole lifecycle of furniture purchases is considered when making purchasing decisions.

Let's examine how some of our key products can fulfil sustainability criteria whilst also being durable, cost effective and stylish.

 Recycled Materials

Our range of Arc chairs are all 100% recyclable, but the Recycled One Piece Chair takes this one step further by using off cuts and discarded material from the injection moulding process used to produce plastic chairs.

These off-cuts and waste materials are collected, then shredded into small pieces, cleaned and melted down to form new material.

This recycled plastic is used in the injection moulding process to create new Titan chairs, saving over 15 tonnes of waste material per year. These new chairs are subject to the same rigorous safety and ergonomic testing as the standard one piece chairs. This makes them perfectly suited to the demands of modern classrooms.

Lifespan and Durability

Whilst using recycled and recyclable materials helps to reduce the environmental impact of a product, the most sustainable option is usually the one that has the longest lifespan. This is primarily due to the energy intensive nature of manufacturing, which results in premature replacement of a product being more costly from an environmental perspective than continued use of an existing product, even if the replacement is produced in a more sustainable way than the original item.

 This is why our Titan One Piece chairs are designed to last for decades, and in all iterations feature a class-leading 20 year guarantee.

What Does Forest Steward Council (FSC) Mean?

Many of our products that include wood components, such as tabletops, desktops or legs, feature the letters 'FSC' in the title. This means that the materials used have been certified for sustainability by the Forest Stewardship Council.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international, non-governmental organisation whose objective is to promote and certify environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable forest use.

At the heart of the FSC's mission is its certification of responsible forest stewardship. This requires organisations throughout the supply chain to undergo a process of independent auditing to ensure that they adhere to the FSC's ten primary principles and criteria, relating to sustainability, social welfare and long term economic viability. A chain of custody system enables the tracking of of FSC certified materials from the forest to the end user.

You can be sure, then, that any products that feature an FSC designation meet rigorous standards for sustainability.

ISO14001 Certification

Titan Furniture, which manufactures the majority of our classroom chairs and tables, has attained ISO 14001 certification, which not only sets internationally recognised standards for environmental management systems, but also ensures that certified companies commit to a continual process of minimising their ecological impact.

Ultimately, any purchase of new items will have some environmental footprint, but careful choice of products can help not only to reduce this footprint, but also to minimise expenditure in the long term through greater durability and the consequent extended lifespan.