From desks and chairs to delivery packaging, this downtown office puts an organization’s sustainability principles into practice

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan prides itself on investing in sustainable companies. So, in planning to move its head office to a new building in downtown Toronto, it’s placing emphasis on the environmental impact and sustainability of its own office furnishings and materials.

“A lot of the furnishings in the building we’ve been in since the 1990s are at their end of life. Moving to the new building gives us a clean slate,” says George Konidis, OTPP’s managing director and global head of real estate operations and workplace transformation. The pension plan has made public commitments to be net zero by 2050 and since 2019 has already decreased its portfolio emissions intensity by 32 per cent and absolute emissions by 3 per cent.