The move toward home working could cause a landfill influx of millions of chairs and desks as offices close or downsize following Covid-19, warns BusinessWaste.co.uk.

The business waste specialists are warning of a mountain of unwanted office furniture making its way to landfill as companies embrace a new way of working - and closing offices as a result.

A study undertaken by YouGov showed that a quarter of UK businesses are planning to close or downsize their office space as a result of a shift toward home working. There were over 6m private sector businesses in the UK in 2020 - the vast majority (5.94m) of which were small businesses, which have an average of 10 employees. If a quarter of businesses closed their office space, as the YouGov study suggests, this would mean around 15m desks and chairs would no longer be in use.

London, as the nation’s capital, has the largest square footage of office stock at 140m sq ft - the next closest, Manchester (20m sq ft), Birmingham (18m sq ft) and Glasgow (13m q ft), are all less likely to see huge influxes of office furniture being thrown away, according to the report. But even cities with a few thousand office workers are going to feel the effects - both economic, in city centres, and environmental, as office supplies are ripped out and unceremoniously thrown away.

Worryingly, if even half of the 1.5m businesses looking to shift their working patterns merely downsized, it would still create an enormous excess of office furniture ready to be sent to the tip - and charity shops aren’t the answer.