Sustainability: Common Sense and a Common Goal

When it comes to sustainability we have many views, which match our many years of experience. The entire team at The Refinishing Touch is passionate about helping government, hospitality and higher education institutions realize the benefits of sustainable furniture asset management.

Yet it’s important to remember the broader elements and how vital sustainability is to each of us. Just consider this statement:

“At its essence, sustainability means ensuring prosperity and environmental protection without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. A sustainable world is one where people can escape poverty and enjoy decent work without harming the earth’s essential ecosystems and resources; where people can stay healthy and get the food and water they need; where everyone can access clean energy that doesn’t contribute to climate change.”

This is an excerpt from a recent commentary from Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN). Ban Ki-moon’s commentary reviews the progress and goals that have been reached by the international community, looks towards the year ahead of us, and calls upon each of us to make sustainability more commonplace.

The Secretary-General also stresses the key role the private sector plays in fulfilling sustainability goals. He outlines the proven success of public-private partnerships, wealth and job creation, as well as outlining the fundamentally sound business sense of sustainability. He states: “More and more businesses are seeing that sustainability is not just in the common good but that sustainability is common sense.” We couldn’t agree more.

All of us, individually and collectively, need to do our part. Our time dedicated to refinishing, re-upholstering and remanufacturing assets within hotels, colleges and government buildings has shown us first-hand the impact that each individual project can have and the massive opportunity presented across each industry. Even so, it’s not just about the impact of individual businesses or the actions of an individual – whether we are helping a team that is working at a hotel, a college campus, a five-star spa, a government facility, a courthouse, or barracks, the impact is about entire communities and the broader impact of reducing carbon outputs, reducing landfill and waste and minimizing unnecessary consumption of new resources.

The opportunities to implement positive change through sustainable initiatives and purposeful actions are enormous. As a team, we’re looking forward to all the environmental innovations and sustainable goals that 2015 will bring.

To speak to one of our team about the benefits of sustainable furniture asset management please call (800) 523-9448 or email us at [email protected]. Find out more about the UN’s Millennium Goals for 2015 at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals.