What Happens to Old Filing Cabinets? The UK Furniture Disposal Report

The metal filing cabinet has the clearest ending of any office furniture, and Furniture in Fashion explains what actually happens to it. This 2026 report finds a sharp split by construction: steel cabinets are close to single material objects, so they are repainted, reused and eventually recovered as scrap metal with very little lost, while wood effect chipboard cabinets rarely survive a single relocation because their fixings pull through under load. The analysis identifies loaded weight as the real hazard, since paper is dense and a full four drawer unit concentrates mass high in the carcass, and names the anti tilt interlock as the component whose failure makes a second hand cabinet unsafe rather than merely worn. It also explains why reduced paperwork volumes have moved household filing into desks, pedestals and sideboards. No national disposal figures are quoted because none are published....