During a recession reinventing part of your business can create new growth prospects once the economy begins to recover. Office furnishing company Herman Miller is doing just that by reinventing office wiring. The project, called Convia, attempts to make electrical infrastructure flexible and programmable, saving both time and money. It allows you to re-wire a room with a wave of you hand, literally.

How it works: Say you have an office space and you want to build it out into two offices. Typically an electrician would rip out the current wiring and rewire everything so the newly separated offices could control their lighting. With Convia install an external switch and point the wand at the lighting fixture you want it to control, and abracadabra, two separate circuits. The system also controls temperature and electric devices so you can control the flow of electricity to unused office equipment, saving electricity and money.

If you need help outfitting your office check out Rofo QuickMove for your Office!

Steelcase, an office furniture manufacturer based in Michigan, offers more Cradle to Cradle certified products than any other company in any industry. They make an admirable effort to lower the environmental impact of all their products and manufacturing facilities. The company has partnered with Rofo to offer great deals on Steelcase office furniture to Rofo users.

Cradle to Cradle Design (C2C) is a design philosophy that encourages people to think about the entire life cycle of a product and to make that product’s life cycle sustainable. The goal is to design both functional and ecologically intelligent products. Think LEED certification for your office chair.

The certification program was introduced in 2005 by consulting firm McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) and invokes the precious metal grading scale that marketers love, with ratings of basic, silver, gold and platinum. Click HERE to take a look at the certification matrix (slightly difficult to decipher), which grades products in five categories: Materials, Material Re-utilization/Design for Environment, Energy, Water, and Social Responsibility.