Omnicom Clearance, London

When Omnicom needed to clear seven floors of its Central London offices, IE managed the whole programme in seven days, with nothing sent to landfill. Surplus furniture was either bought back, recycled, re-used, or donated to Olive Academies Trust, where it is now helping young people in alternative provision settings. The result was a fast, sustainably responsible clearance that turned redundant assets into measurable environmental savings and real social value.

A large-scale clearance, handled responsibly

IE was appointed to clear seven floors of Omnicom's Central London offices, removing redundant furniture quickly without sending usable items to waste.

A clearance of this size carries a familiar tension for facilities and procurement teams: the work needs to happen at pace, often around a tight schedule, yet the volume of furniture involved can have a high environmental cost if it is simply overlooked. For Omnicom, the brief was to combine speed with sustainability, so that the move-out would support the organisation's wider environmental commitments rather than work against them.

The scope of work covered:

• A seven-day clearance across seven floors in Central London.
• A furniture buy-back arrangement worth £11,000, returning value to the client.
• A sorting and routing process that sent every item to its next best possible destination, whether it be re-use, recycling, or charitable donation.

Challenges and how IE addressed them 

The main challenge was clearing a high volume of furniture quickly from a busy Central London office building while still avoiding landfill.

Working at this scale in a city-centre location places real pressure on logistics, timings, and access. IE managed the programme end-to-end, auditing what was leaving the site and deciding, item by item, what could be re-used, what should be recycled, and what could be donated. This is the practical heart of a circular approach: the more carefully items are triaged, the less ends up as waste.

Rather than treating donation as an afterthought, IE coordinated the handover directly with Olive Academies Trust, a not-for-profit multi-academy trust specialising in alternative provision for children and young people who have been excluded from, or have struggled in, mainstream school. IE's delivery team transported the donated furniture to the trust's Havering site, supporting a smooth unload process so that the items arrived safely and ready to use.

Outcomes and impact

The clearance achieved a 100% diversion rate, meaning no furniture was sent to landfill.

Across the programme, IE's clearance and re-use work delivered:

• 45,452 kg of CO2e saved.
• 25,251 kg of furniture diverted from landfill.
• £6,186 in landfill costs avoided.
• An environmental saving equivalent to planting 2,164 trees, or avoiding 216,438 miles of car travel.

In total, 1,152 items were kept in use or recycled: 384 were re-used, 418 were recycled, and 350 were donated to charity, including the furniture sent to Olive Academies Trust.

The human impact is where the story comes to life. At the trust, the donated items are being put to immediate and meaningful use. Lockers are giving students their own secure space for belongings, which can make a genuine difference to young people who need to feel safe and settled. High-back pod chairs are being used in a new SEND classroom and corridor at the Thurrock site, offering students an uninterrupted space to regulate, while high desks with stools support "choose to learn" accessible areas, giving students an alternative to the standard classroom desk set-up.

As Simon Warman, Facilities Supervisor at Olive Academies Trust, put it: "The items we have received are fantastic and will be put to very good use." For Omnicom, that means furniture that had reached the end of its life in one setting is now actively supporting learning and wellbeing in another.

This is what a well-managed clearance can achieve: operational efficiency for the client, strong environmental credentials backed by data, and a positive social outcome that everyone involved can be proud of.