December 11, 2025
The Ripple Effect of Thoughtful Products
The supply chains of materials and products that make our buildings are still full of opportunities for efficiency and creative breakthroughs.
Improving product design and manufacturing can often have a more holistic impact than, say, the incremental gains achieved by improving a building’s energy efficiency. We need to work on both, of course—but because products are made by people, any company that makes consistent strides in design, sourcing, and manufacturing can influence communities around the world—from the users who inhabit finished spaces to the workers who supply materials and parts. This kind of networked, multiplier effect has the power to shift entire industries and cultures.
In the latest episode of Deep Green, created in partnership with Teknion, host Avi Rajagopal sits down with David McDivitt, vice president of sustainability at Teknion. The company has long been recognized for its transparency and responsible manufacturing practices, but McDivitt shares where Teknion stands today—and what new opportunities lie ahead for creating even greater impact. Read an excerpt of their conversation below or listen to the full episode on the Surround Podcast Network.
Avinash Rajagopal: I had a chance to read Teknion’s 2025 Impact Report, and I love the sentence right at the start: “Doing the right thing, not the now thing.” How do you maintain your focus on impact amid all the fluctuations in demand we always see in our industry, whether now or 10 years ago?
David McDivitt: There is always something new happening in the space, be it new chemicals of concern or new and updated certifications. It’s really easy to get in the weeds, whether you’re in the industry or looking from the outside. But we try to view this space through a lens that emphasizes real-world, concrete actions. We balance this focus with deep listening, seeking to connect with and listen to our customers, peers, and other voices so we can learn, build on the successes of others, and challenge ourselves to do better and do our part, too.
AR: Over the last 50 years, furniture design has become dominated by plastics, leading to high carbon emissions due to reliance on fossil fuels and toxicity. Plastics are complex, with many components and layers.
Of course, they’re also part of our usage and culture. This is not a problem unique to Teknion, nor is it a problem Teknion created, but it’s an endemic situation in the industry. Are you doing anything to shift or change the way you use plastics, particularly as part of your materials mix?
DM: We start with transparency. That’s the foundation for taking action in this space. We identify what is really in the materials that go into our products and the packaging that protects them. Then, we determine the impacts of those materials, whether they are health impacts, ecosystem-related, or related to global climate change, both in theory and in reality.
We know that most products made of plastic are not truly recycled, even if they technically can be, and we take that into consideration. We then use this data to focus our efforts and minimize those impacts. Ultimately, we need to challenge the status quo and make significant moves to create real change.
The results of these actions are integrated into our product certifications, like Declare and BFAE3, which we participate in to show our customers what we’re doing and to continually challenge ourselves to improve. The teams that develop and optimize these standards challenge us and everyone in our industry to get better, and we truly appreciate that.
AR: Those kinds of industry-wide standards are really important. Can you share some of the measures you’ve taken along this journey with plastics?
DM: Absolutely. Where we start first is by replacing the really problematic plastics—for example, PVC or Teflon, which includes a PFAS component. PVC in edge bending has been replaced with polypropylene, while Teflon in table glides has been replaced with PFAS-free polymers.
Other plastics have surprising impacts as well. For example, nylon, with an embodied carbon factor of nine kilograms of carbon per kilogram of virgin material, is a problematic plastic with a climate change impact at least twice that of many other plastics. So, the next step we take is to use only as much plastic as needed and only where it’s necessary. We design those plastic components with the intention of being long-lasting and beautiful.
When we do use plastics, we work with our suppliers to replace virgin plastics with the highest recycled content version possible. In the case of nylon, a 50% recycled content nylon is typically readily available and can be directly used in many cases. The one exception to this is in lighter-colored components, which can be discolored by the darker materials in the remelted plastic. However, that doesn’t stop us from using higher recycled content in our highest-selling colors, which, of course, are blacks and grays.
We also look to use lower embodied carbon plastics, such as polypropylene or polyethylene, that can directly replace nylon with carbon contents about half that of nylon or even less.
We also rely on our supplier partners to provide innovative recycled formulations that can have even greater impacts, whether that’s plastics derived from ocean waste materials or chemically recycled nylon. These can further reduce the impacts in the near term.
AR: I think this kind of comprehensive, pragmatic, and reasoned approach is what I know Teknion for, right? From your efforts around materials transparency in the 2000s to today, you’ve done so much to open up your supply chains, examine each of those materials, and look for opportunities—whether it’s phasing some out entirely, replacing them in certain cases, or finding more recycled content when it’s available. Additionally, keeping an eye on that carbon number is fantastic. I’d like to come back to carbon emissions in a second, but of course, another issue with plastics is waste in manufacturing.
Manufacturing is not an exact science due to fluctuations in supply and demand. How do you address waste at Teknion? What are some of the things you’re doing in this area?
DM: Sure. We look at both small opportunities and high-impact areas, focusing on increasing efficiency, reducing waste, and promoting circularity—finding uses for our waste instead of simply disposing of it. For example, we explore circularity within our own facilities.
We use fabric off-cuts and end-of-roll textiles to create protective wraps for use during manufacturing. For instance, these wraps protect aluminum extrusions during inter-site transportation. They help reduce our waste output, decrease the amount of single-use plastic wrap we consume, and last much longer than traditional wraps.
This approach is highly visible to our teams in factories and facilities. They see brightly colored contract furniture textiles being used for this purpose, which inspires them to generate their own ideas in this area. We also collaborate closely with our suppliers and local industries to find uses for both our waste and theirs.
We also work with suppliers to reduce their environmental impact. It’s not just a one-way effort.
AR: I love that! One of the things I noticed in Teknion’s Impact Report is your Scope 3 emissions—which are the emissions that are made not at your premises, by your staff, or by your operations, but rather by the operations, staff, and energy use at your suppliers—are 85 percent of Teknion’s carbon footprint.
This is the problem all companies have when we start to really dive deep into carbon emissions. Scope 1 and 2 emissions are comparatively more within our control. But once we look at our suppliers’ emissions, it gets so much more complicated.
How are you working with your suppliers on this, as you’re working with them on waste?
DM: Absolutely. These things go together, and Teknion is part of a value chain from raw material suppliers to our dealers, installers, customers, and specifiers. Our impact is amplified immeasurably by sharing and working together with all members of this ecosystem.
We have a huge breadth of suppliers, from large sophisticated suppliers to local smaller component suppliers. As a company that’s had a greenhouse gas reduction program for over 20 years, we have the ability and the responsibility to pass on the experiences and learnings that we’ve had to our suppliers.
We complete workshops with our suppliers to share tools and resources to help them accelerate or begin their own greenhouse gas reduction programs. This includes providing them with our tracking and monitoring templates and our process learnings. Through these workshops, we form connections and identify opportunities for collaboration beyond just carbon initiatives.
Our procurement team then works with our suppliers on a day-to-day basis, taking on initiatives like consolidating deliveries, creating reusable shipping containers, and managing production waste returns through to biofuel integration and co-development of lower-carbon products.
Through these efforts, we’ve been able to save hundreds of tons of carbon directly and indirectly. By emphasizing an openly collaborative rather than heroic model, we’re hoping to accelerate the change in our culture, making sustainability and collective action part of the mindset of everyone, both in Teknion and at our supply chain partners.
AR: Let’s talk about the other side of your manufacturing process. We talked about your suppliers, your own organization, and you’re doing so many great things in both those places.
Tell me about how you utilize these tools and how Teknion’s efforts expand from your organization to your suppliers and interface with your customers.
DM: We recognize that specifiers and our customers need to understand our story in order to make and implement their own informed decisions. We have programs and certifications in place to help make this possible.
This covers various aspects of sustainability, including indoor air quality, built environments, and end-of-life disposition of products. We place a strong emphasis on simplicity and consistency. All of our products are at BFA E3 Level 3 and SCS Indoor Advantage Gold for VOC emissions.
This makes it more straightforward and easier to understand for specifiers, eliminating the need for numerous caveats. We also have 18 EPDs covering over 70% of our product lines. This is something we continue to cultivate and grow as it meets a real demand in the market.
When it comes to A&D firms with their own standards, it’s another variant. However, we truly appreciate the work they’ve put in to emphasize, both with us and with specifiers, where they want to focus baseline efforts as well as market differentiators. This helps us organize our programs and chart a path forward for growth.
AR: All these efforts work together—whether we’re talking about the broader approach or transparency. It’s really wonderful to hear from you, David, about the multi-layered, multi-scale approach you’re taking to change real systems in the furniture industry.
Listen to “The Ripple Effect of Thoughtful Products” on the Surround Podcast Network.
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