Purpose Due to the increasing awareness of the need to protect the environment, reverse logistics (RL) is being promoted to improve the ecological sustainability of production. RL can lower the costs of waste disposal, increase market competitiveness, and maintain a good corporate image. Hence, modern companies are focusing on environmental protection to demonstrate social responsibility. According to the OECD report of 2003, buildings consume 32 percent of resources, 12 percent of water, and 40 percent of energy worldwide, and the building waste comprises almost 40 percent of the all waste in the world. Therefore, controlling waste from the interior design sector may help slow global warming. This paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This investigation models the current and new RL of disposing interior design waste in Taiwan. Modeling the carbon footprint (CF) of disposing interior design waste can help companies be aware of the environmental impact of disposing of waste, and how to improve it through RL. This investigation models the CFs of disposing interior design waste based on studies from Benjaafar et al. (2013), Pishvaee et al. (2009, 2010), and Tascione et al. (2014). Findings Analytical results showed that the RL significantly decreases the environmental impact of wastes. Companies can control carbon emission through the findings of this study and find how to improve their recycling process through RL. Research limitations/implications This study used the model proposed by Tascione et al. (2014) to develop an RL model for Taiwan. Whereas most studies in the literature analyze the carbon emissions from the comparison between cost and benefit, this study considered the logistics for the whole lifecycle of a product. The analytical results of this study reveal that that RL can reduce the environmental impact of wastes. This case study is the first to obtain results that can be extended to other countries. This study also reveals the importance of recycling plants that can process demolition waste for reuse. Originality/value This is the first study to model the RL based on literatures. The findings of this study can be extended to other cases.