A Summer of Re-Use at the University

The summer has arrived at the University of Greenwich, the students have gone home for a few months and many of the offices, labs and classrooms are being re-furbished and updated. Once again the students at Avery Hill used the re-use project (run in conjunction with CRISP) to donate their unwanted items to charity and this year the project was rolled out to Macmillan Halls to give students in Greenwich the opportunity to donate their unwanted items too.

The CRISP Re-use project worked with over 70 different halls of residence this year, including the two from the University of Greenwich and had a reach as far as 19,943 students from 11 different universities. In total CRISP managed to save 30 tonnes from going to waste with nearly 85% of that being re-used. The overall estimated CO2 (e) reduction achieved by the project as a whole was 342 tonnes of which 21.1 was saved from the University of Greenwich.

The students donated a wide variety of different items including clothes, bedding, electronics, televisions, books, kitchenware and food. Everything from armchairs to an old Brooks leather saddle ended up in the back of the van when CRISP arrived to collect the items and all of these re-usable objects were transported to the CRISP warehouse to be sorted and re-distributed.

A selection of items donated at Avery Hill

Once the items have been sorted they’re sent out to a variety of different charities including, Ace of Clubs, Emmaus, Manna Centre, St Mungo’s, Streetlytes, the Marylebone Project and the Upper Room who all help for the homeless and vulnerable in London. As well as this charities working to support communities, children, animals, hospitals, right through to projects establishing sustainable projects in some of the world’s poorest countries are supported by the project including Bright Sparks, Clothes Aid, Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital, OFFERS/Ex-IT and TRAID.

Outside of the halls of residence many of the University’s facilities are being upgraded and prepared for the new influx of students in September and often this means a re-organisation and sometimes the removal of furniture. Rather than send our unwanted furniture to disposal we have been looking to a variety of different organisations to re-use what we have been unable to re-home within the University. This summer we have re-homed over 50 desks from the Drill Hall Library – 40 of them going to Bexley Grammar (one of the University’s feeder schools), the further 10 desks from the Drill Hall, 70 chairs from Greenwich labs and a small selection of office furniture from the School of Business ended up going to an organisation called TRUP (The Re-Use Partnership) who refurbish and re-distribute the furniture to local charities, organisations and start-up businesses.

Bexley Grammar students Celebrate Receiving the desks - (OK they're actually celebrating their exam results but they are pretty pleased with the desks too!)