Students Reducing Waste and Helping Charity at the Same Time!

The University of Greenwich has saved over one tonne of reusable items that would normally end up in the skip and local charities are the ones to benefit. Working in partnership with an organisation called CRISP, students and volunteers at Avery Hill Campus saved items that would have otherwise been thrown out at the end of the year. These items have been collected by CRISP who are now redistributing these items to a number of London based charities.

Isabelle in amongst the donations

The project was spearheaded by the University’s Sustainability Team, Kat Thorne and John Bailey, and run by their Sustainability Projects Intern, Isabelle Monk, who recruited student volunteers to help promote the project and collect the waste to a central point on Avery Hill Campus. Students, who typically leave behind and throw away a lot of waste when they return home for summer, were encouraged to identify items that they no longer wanted but could be re-used by charity. By the end of the project the students had donated over one tonne of items (that’s one kg per student!) including televisions, clothes, kitchenware, books, stationary and a lot of bedding.

All the waste collected together

Due to the variety of items donated there will be a number of charities that will benefit, much of the bedding will be going to local homeless shelters and will be keeping some of London’s homeless people warm this winter. Clothes will be filling the rails of the local charity shops and being sported by many living in refugee camps across the world while many of the other items will be sold on to raise funds for the likes of Red Cross, Traid, St. Mungo’s and Help for Heroes.

The Halls reuse scheme has run in a number of other London universities previously but this is the first time at the University of Greenwich. The pilot project has been widely hailed as a success and will be rolled out across all the halls at the University next year. The success of the project was thanks to everyone involved including Housekeepers, Porters, Student Accommodation office, and the student volunteers, especially Construction Management MSc student Ashrith Patel who dedicated a lot of time to the project. Thanks to everyone that was involved.

The guys from CRISP and the full van

Tomas helps with collecting a TV