Companies that relocate produce a significant amount of waste. Reducing moving waste prevents businesses from contributing to landfills. Implementing various methods of landfill diversion is key to protecting the environment. Here are five ways businesses can reduce their moving waste.

What is landfill diversion?

Landfill diversion is the effort to minimize sending waste into landfills. While on the surface landfills appear to keep the environment clean, they actually degrade local water, soil, and plant systems. Plus, keeping copious amounts of waste out of landfills delays the need to create new ones.

Once products are sent to a landfill, their utility is complete—they can never be used again. The natural resources and energy directed into producing those products are wasted. But recycling materials that have reached their useful end creates further value.

Landfills are filled with plastics and harmful chemicals. Rainwater that falls into the landfills draws out these chemicals, creating a toxic soup that seeps into groundwater and contaminates it. Landfills are also major sources of greenhouse gases, which pose risks to humans and animals.

What types of moving waste do companies produce?

Businesses on the move leave behind significant waste. Office furniture, consisting of wood, metal, foam, and plastic, releases toxic substances when left in landfills. Technology waste contains hazardous materials, such as mercury, lead, and cadmium, which can harm the environment.

Companies handle various paper documents, such as agreements and contracts. Paper waste accounts for 26 percent of total waste in landfills and contributes to deforestation. Plastic waste, like bins, storage compartments, and packing materials, takes years to decompose when discarded.

How do companies reduce moving waste with landfill avoidance?

When a corporate relocation is on the horizon, businesses are urged to avoid sending office products to the landfill. Business owners and managers should make a conscious effort to practice landfill avoidance and mitigate the harmful environmental impact of the move.

1. Use Sustainable Supplies

Opting for reusable crates and pallets reduces waste during an office move. Plastic bins are alternatives to cardboard boxes; moving companies drop them off ahead of the move and pick them up after employees unpack. Use recycled packing materials, like cardboard boxes, which are less expensive than ones bought new. Both these tactics save companies money and avoid sending more waste into landfills.

Reusable bubble wrap is a sustainable packing option that can be used on multiple moves. One version of such is Comp-U-Wrap, which is used for packing computer equipment & peripherals.

2. Donate

Rather than contribute to the 17 billion pounds of office assets in landfills, donate furniture and equipment that are in good condition to charities or organizations in need. Habitat for Humanity and Goodwill may take certain items; be sure to call ahead to check and coordinate the logistics.

3. Sell Items

Businesses might consider selling their used office furniture to companies that buy, disassemble, and remove them. Small start-ups, in this way, are able to obtain the furniture they need at affordable prices. Selling furniture prevents the items from unnecessarily piling up in landfills.

4. Recycle

Recycle paper waste and cardboard once the relocation is complete. Large quantities of paper can usually be recycled through the city’s recycling program. Contact the local public work’s department for locations of receptacles or hire a company to haul away recyclable items.

5. Downsize

While moving less items is good for the company’s budget, it also has a positive effect on the environment. Assess the goods in the office and eliminate unnecessary items. Inventory management ensures only the essential office items are transported to the new location.

Companies can practice sustainability well before and after a move. For instance, instead of producing mass amounts of paper waste, move to digital documentation. Digitized documents save paper and reduce the business’s environmental footprint. Alternatively, use recycled paper or print on both sides.

Consider opting for eco-friendly technology to reduce technology waste. Eco-friendly technology equipment, such as printers and scanners, is manufactured with sustainable materials and energy-efficient. Eco-friendly copiers are designed to use less energy while operating and emit low levels of harmful chemicals.

Invest in eco-friendly furniture to minimize the impact on the environment. This type of furniture is made from eco-friendly materials, such as natural fibers (organic cotton, jute, or hemp) used in the upholstery. Office desks and chairs, for instance, may be sustainably sourced.

The environmental impact of a corporate relocation is significant. But companies can minimize waste and avoid landfills with the right practices, like those above. Audit the move’s environmental impact beforehand, considering the transportation methods and volume of items to prioritize sustainability.

When a sustainable corporate move is desired, choose Chicago Office Movers. As a comprehensive commercial moving service, we’ll start by helping you plan a sustainable relocation that minimizes adding waste to landfills. We support the use eco-friendly practices.

Our moving crews are licensed, trained, and background-checked to give businesses confidence as we handle secure and fragile items. We rely on advanced equipment to safely load and unload your goods, from bulky office furniture to sensitive electronics and pricey antiques.

We offer convenient services to cover all your relocation needs. Our valued customers have access to short- and long-term storage, paperwork storage options, and boxes and crates that protect your items.

Chicago Office Movers is prepared to relocate your business locally, long-distance, or internationally. You receive tracking information, allowing you to track the progress of your move. Expect us to expertly handle every phase of the office move.

When you seek an affordable, environmentally-conscious and efficient office mover, contact Chicago Office Movers in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Our service is the top choice for major Chicagoland corporations seeking to minimize company downtime and ensure a successful relocation.

Call us at 312-244-2246 (CHI-CAGO) or fill out a form for a free estimate.

Branding is most recognized in a company’s marketing and advertising. But creative branding is also important to a business’s physical space. Colors, fonts, and logos create visual appeal in the office interior, spreading the brand message and core mission far and wide.

What is branding?

Whether the business is a small startup or an established corporation with worldwide recognition, branding plays an important role. Customers, competitors, and the community perceive the company through the unique lens of branding. Creative branding shapes their perceptions and sets the company’s trajectory.

A business’s identity is showcased through its name and logo, choice of design and colors, mission, core values, and tone. Other aspects of branding include the uniqueness of the products, the level of quality customer service, and even the pricing strategy the company employs.

The company’s creative branding extends to their office interior. Employees and visitors are given an inside look at where the creative juices start when they enter a business that has made the space their own. Staff also feel like a part of the team when the office is branded.

What are the benefits of office branding?

An office space with the company colors on walls, furniture, and décor improves employee morale. Brand visibility also increases among visitors who associate the visual intrigue with a positive experience. Office wall graphics can easily become backdrops for social media posts and other marketing.

What are creative solutions to branding issues in office interiors?

1. Showcase the Company Logo

A vibrant, updated logo with the company colors is the starting point for branding the office. The logo should be displayed prominently in the office building, ready to be viewed and appreciated by the visitors, partners, and staff who see it immediately upon entering.

2. Create a Branded Wall

Branded walls are achieved with the help of graphics. Easily customizable and installed, office wall graphics can be placed on the walls to create a focal point and simultaneously incorporate visual branding. Use the company colors and logo to create eye-catching designs.

3. Employ Zoning Techniques

Zoning techniques can be used to distinguish one office space from another. For example, install a tranquil ocean print on the lunchroom wall to promote relaxation. The meeting room might feature a frosted wall to promote privacy. Add visual intrigue to the lobby with abstract prints.

4. Reinforce Brand Identity with Décor

Gift office employees branded coffee mugs to help them feel they are a valuable part of the team. Consider distributing branded pens, soft touch notebooks, or custom sticky notes, too. Custom wall art also helps reinforce the brand identity, creating visual and emotional cohesiveness.

5. Revitalize the Space with Nature

A company that prioritizes sustainability might enhance their office branding with green practices. Living walls filled with plants showcase the company’s commitment to the environment, while adding vibrancy to the communal workspace. The company’s eco-friendly values and office interior immediately align.

6. Promote Company Celebrations

Custom infographics are an ideal way to inform employees about various company events, from new product rollouts to team-building trips. Branded images are effective when the business hits benchmarks or closes major deals. LED walls, SEG graphics, and glass clings deliver uplifting messages creatively.

7. Design the Interior with Branding

One of the best ways to enhance branding inside the office is to incorporate the company colors, fonts, and logos in the interior design. A company that sells guitars, for instance, might feature guitar-themed acoustic paneling on the conference room walls paired with fun, bright yellow chairs.

The headquarters of a coffee shop might infuse their office space with playful décor. For instance, the offices might be designed to look like the interior of one of their locations, with cozy chairs, coffee jar décor on the shelves, and the colorful company logo in the center.

8. Prioritize High Traffic Areas

Certain areas in the company benefit from more focused branding. The reception or lobby area, for instance, should receive red-carpet treatment, simply due to their high level of visibility. If meeting rooms are used frequently, ensure branding is front and center in these areas, too.

Proactive branding should be an integral part of every company’s interior office design. By utilizing the abovementioned solutions to creative branding issues, businesses show their employees, customers, partners, and visitors that they prize their team and the work they do.

Every inch of the workplace ideally reflects the company’s brand. The interior office itself, from the lunchrooms to the conference rooms and the lobby, should genuinely showcase the company culture. A thoughtfully branded space helps create a memorable brand experience for everyone.

When your office interior could use an upgrade, renovations may be necessary. Chicago Office Movers is ready to help you achieve your goal. Our office moving crews will carefully move heavy furniture, uninstall equipment, and move office goods to a new building so that your renovation can get underway.

In preparation for your exciting renovation project, our moving professionals pack and label boxes, clear out appliances and equipment, and pack the moving truck. Since we’re connected with organizations that accept or discard old furniture, we can properly eliminate unwanted possessions.

However, if your company intends to relocate to an entirely different space, Chicago Office Movers can transport your goods with our dependable corporate relocation services. We take care of the move from start to finish, including planning, packing, moving, and unpacking at the destination.

Business customers enjoy a wide range of conveniences. We offer short- and long-term storage options, add-on services and insurance and service contracts. Crews are licensed, trained, and background-checked to give you confidence. We’ll move your company locally, long distance, or internationally.

Chicago Office Movers is the preferred commercial mover for Chicagoland businesses. Our affordable rates, excellent customer service, and careful handling of your possessions earns us awards and high ratings. Schedule your upcoming corporate move by calling our Elk Grove Village, Illinois, office today.

Introduction

The Daily Herald Media Group (DH) is a media company that publishes newspapers in print and digital formats and provides marketing solutions.  The group is based in the Chicago suburbs and has been the main source of information for the local residents for over 150 years, offering a diverse portfolio of media and multiple ways to consume it.  The Daily Herald has moved their business four times with Chicago Office Movers over the past 30 years.  These moves were made to help the Daily Herald with growth, downsizing, rightsizing, selling of the printing division, and transitioning to remote work.

Client Background

There are two major factors at play for the most recent move.  The first is the sale of their Schaumburg location and all of their printing machinery at this location to the Chicago Tribune.  The Chicago Tribune will be doing all of the printing for the Daily Herald from now on.  The second factor is that the Daily Herald wanted to downsize their office space as employees transition to working remotely.  They still have a small office space in Schaumburg for meetings and similar purposes.

Specific Requirements

An important requirement for their move was for us to provide “paper” storage in our warehouse which includes their storage racking, past newspaper archives, banker’s boxes of files, and photos.  Our professionals packed, moved, and set up their paper storage so that Daily Herald employees could access this storage.

Challenge

This was a complex move that involved moving personnel and many pieces of equipment.  Dismantling and reassembling the storage in their facility and ours while keeping the archived materials in numerical order to be accessed by Daily Herald employees was our biggest challenge.  Daily Herald staff accessed the storage multiple times during the moving process.

The Daily Herald archive was stored in our warehouse for a year before moving it to their new Schaumburg location.  We also shredded some of their storage per their request, recycled the metal shelving units, and delivered the storage to their new location.

Personalized Services

Over the course of 3 weeks, we decommissioned the Daily Herald’s Arlington Heights location that consisted of two large buildings.  This involved selling excess furniture and modular workstations, recycling furniture, e-recycling, pulling out electrical wires, and maintenance such as cleaning, repairs, debris removal, and spackling.  All employee files were packed on library carts to be moved to the new location.

Implementation

The move was executed in multiple phases after meticulous planning.  Our Director of Commercial Sales wrote the work scope and served as the project manager for the move.  The client approved the plans, and we maintained direct contact with the client throughout the process to keep the move tight and on track.  We kept all parties on time by sticking to a strict schedule.

Special Care for Valuable Items

We used a Rigging machine, which is a specialized piece of moving equipment, to move a historic printing machine that weighs about 4 tons.  This historic printing machine is no longer functional but is an artifact of the industry that is on display at the Daily Herald’s new location.

Results

The client has worked with us for multiple moves and has always been satisfied with our services.  They have referred us to others who are looking for moving services, which has led to us booking additional moves.  They also continue to call us when they need additional services.

Conclusion

Chicago Office Movers can handle complex, multifaceted moves with care and precision, which is why each of our moves with the Daily Herald has been successful.  Our personalized services, meticulous planning, and direct communication facilitated a seamless move for the Daily Herald, underscoring the positive impact we had on their moving experience.

Relocating an office is a complex, daunting task. Without advanced planning, the move can be disastrous. Office relocations come with several risks, but savvy business owners understand how to mitigate them and ensure a smooth transition to the brand-new space.

Major organizational changes come with a high rate of failure—at 70 percent. The pitfalls associated with a company relocation are numerous. But by considering the following risks and strategies on how to avoid them, business owners can better navigate the relocation process.

What are the main office relocation risks and solutions?

An office relocation demands a major investment in time and planning. Company owners must factor in their budget, security, logistics, and communication with employees and customers. Without considering these issues, the move can be wrought with unforeseen delays and costs.

1. Assess Potential Risks

Identify the risks by conducting a risk assessment; it’s vital to address potential risks before they explode into unmanageable problems. Delays are inevitable during a major move, so create a back-up plan. Agree on time frames, budgets, and resources with company leaders.

Security is important for businesses, so take the time to secure physical documents. Create a logistical plan to ensure sensitive paperwork is packed properly and not left behind. This step ensures the records are immediately accessible at the destination and keeps operations running smoothly.

2. Back Up Records

In the frenzy of a corporate relocation, security can easily be mishandled. Depending on the industry, security regulations might be in place, and it is the company’s legal responsibility to adhere to them. Even during the transition, it’s critical that the company demonstrates compliance.

Avoid any missteps in security by backing up electronic records. The company’s electronic devices hold a storehouse of critical data. Since it takes time to fully back up the system, begin the process weeks before the move. Ensure the right infrastructure is in place at the destination to prevent disruptions.

3. Engage Staff

Employees are the lifeblood of a business, keeping it functional and running. During the excitement of a move, it can be easy to overlook the staff. Uninformed employees feel disrespected and disempowered. A corporate move is a life-changing event for them, as it affects their commute and potentially their job.

Avoid disregarding office staff and keep them informed about the progress of the move. Involve them in the process by assigning department leaders to answer staff questions about the relocation. Their input can inform company leader about specific issues, like equipment requirements or logistical challenges.

4. Reduce Clutter

Taking every piece of scratched office furniture, dented file cabinet, or outdated equipment will unnecessarily increase the relocation costs. Full-service movers usually charge by weight. Furthermore, it’s the company’s responsibility to not leave unwanted items behind for the next tenant.

Rather than move old desks and chairs that have no place in the new office space, businesses should declutter before the relocation. Sell reusable furniture items or donate them. Recycling companies are available to haul recyclable goods from the premises; it’s cost-effective and better for the environment.

5. Notify Customers

Failing to inform customers, business partners, and stakeholders about the company’s new contact information (ie, address, phone) can lead to confusion and unnecessary disruptions. Equally disruptive is to not inform them in advance and fail to give them adequate time to make adjustments.

Rather than risk interruptions, relocating companies should inform customers and stakeholders well in advance and via various methods. Use the company website, emails, social media, and posters to make announcements of the move. Check that the new contact information is correct before sending it out.

6. Create a Floorplan

Neglecting to visualize the new space can be disastrous once the office movers bring all the goods from the previous location. The furniture and equipment needs may be different in the new space. Staff may also have special requirements in the new office.

Creating a detailed floorplan in advance of the relocation can help company leaders avoid the pitfalls of limited space or excessive furniture. Measure the new office before making decisions. Assess staff accessibility as well as health and safety regulations. Account for growth and changes, too.

7. Schedule Movers in Advance

Office movers should be scheduled in advance to mitigate any risks. Movers who specialize in relocating companies are required for an office move—even if the business is a start-up, professional help is necessary for a safe and successful relocation.

Moving a business is a time-consuming endeavor, one that can take several months to properly plan and execute. Company leaders are advised to give commercial moving specialists the task of planning the details of the relocation so that they can focus on running their business.

Research various commercial movers and obtain multiple quotes. Check online reviews for the quality of service and seek recommendations from colleagues. A local five-star corporate mover that businesses should consider is Chicago Office Movers. We offer high-quality yet budget-friendly moving services.

Chicago Office Movers has been the preferred commercial mover for countless area businesses. We’ve helped well-known universities and major corporations transition to their new space. Whether you are moving a small or large business, we are dedicated to ensuring an exceptional move experience.

Our licensed and background-checked movers are highly trained to handle all office goods securely and carefully. Crews are available to pack all office belongings and unpack at the destination. By utilizing our professional packing services, your company experiences less downtime.

Given our years of experience, we can also help you plan the details for a successful office relocation. If you need short- or long-term storage, Chicago Office Movers can offer you both. Our moving trucks are climate-controlled and feature air-ride suspensions to further protect your fragile goods.

Chicago Office Movers has earned a reputation for excellence in local, long-distance, and international corporate relocations. Whether you plan to move complex IT systems, fragile artwork, or bulky furniture, our moving crews will ensure a seamless transition. Call our Elk Grove Village, Illinois, office for a quote.