Materials have by far the biggest influence on the carbon footprint of a product.
Take the Quiet chair on a gas lift base base. This base has been made from cast aluminium with a post-consumer recycled content of 95%. Aluminium is pretty carbon intensive, even when it’s recycled, it still takes a lot of energy to melt and cast – and it’s heavy, which means transport related carbon can stack up. The total carbon footprint of a Quiet chair on a gas lift base is around 43 kg CO2e.
When we compare that to the tube base we see a big difference – 23% in fact. The steel tube is hollow for a start, so it’s less carbon intensive in all its transport stages but more importantly, it uses less material – and this is key to reducing embodied carbon – as a general rule, the less material that is used, the lower the embodied carbon. The quiet chair with tube legs has a carbon footprint of around 33 kg CO2e.
Timber is different altogether. Unlike the non-renewables, aluminium and steel, that are incredibly energy hungry to extract and to fabricate (even when they are recycled rather than virgin materials), bio-based materials have comparatively low energy demands in both their harvesting and production stages and they have the added benefit of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere all the time they are growing. This CO2 is stored as carbon in the cellular structure of plants and is known as biogenic carbon. While all biogenic carbon will eventually return to the atmosphere as part of the carbon cycle, it can be locked away for a very long time in furniture and architecture.
To keep carbon down, choosing renewable materials is one very basic rule of thumb.
In the case of the Quiet chair on oak legs, this has the lowest carbon footprint of all the Quiet chair’s base options, just 30 kg CO2e. This is typical of renewable materials. A range of 13 kg CO2e between the highest and lowest carbon footprints for this chair might not seem like much on its own but when you think about the number of chairs specified on a project it makes a big difference en masse.
But it’s not all about the carbon footprint of furniture at the first round of fit out, because of the way interior refits occur in cycles, the loose fit package can really add up over time. Which is why it is so important to choose products that have been designed for multiple lifecycles. Like many of our chair collections, the Quiet chair has a cover that has not been glued so it can be replaced multiple times, saving around 75% of embodied carbon every time the cover is replaced instead of the whole chair, stretching the embodied carbon in the Quiet chair out over multiple life cycles instead of just one.
When we focus too much on carbon footprints we are being short-sighted, it’s not all about the upfront carbon at the time of installation, we need to look further down the road to end of life, what happens to the product when it is no longer needed? It is the alignment of circular design and low carbon materials that really makes a difference, bringing down the embodied impacts of every replacement cycle – and that is something to shout about.
This article was originally included in our new publication, Material Intelligence | Design Understanding.
Read on below to gain an in depth understanding of our products and guiding company and sustainability principles.
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