The embedded carbon in office furniture can add up to more than half of an office building’s carbon footprint. That’s why our efforts to cut carbon from the furniture our brands produce span the entire product lifecycle, from development through client specification.
Along the way, we’ve also achieved a pair of first for the furnishings industry.
To attack carbon at its source—the raw materials that go into our products—we’ve focused our best engineering minds on cutting carbon at the material level. Known as Team Carbon, this first-of-its-kind team spends their days researching materials, testing them, and swapping in lower-carbon alternatives to improve the sustainability of our products. At the same time, their work inspires our designers to consider these alternative materials for new products even before they launch.
Team Carbon has already scored some big wins. Thanks to their work, we're replacing virgin nylon with lower-carbon alternatives on office chairs and introducing bio-based foams for lounge seating. These breakthroughs earned Team Carbon a nod from Fast Company when they named MillerKnoll one of 2025’s Best Workplaces for Innovators.
Our leadership in carbon reduction starts with materials, but it doesn’t end there. Recently we launched a new tool that helps customers make more sustainable choices by making it easy to understand the carbon footprint of their projects.
For years, calculating embodied carbon across a furniture installation was a tedious, manual process. Then in October 2025, we launched a pioneering self-service tool on the Ecomedes platform. The tool allows customers to generate Carbon Reports for their projects in minutes using a combination of product data already available through Ecomedes and a spend-based formula. Currently, the tool is proprietary to MillerKnoll, but Ecomedes plans to open it up to other furniture brands eventually. It’s another example of MillerKnoll leading our industry to a more sustainable future.
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