This is a reuse cheat sheet designed to help you decide the best actions to take to get support to start or improve a reuse system in your organisation.

These are activities with a high impact for a low time input. Simply pick and choose which ones are relevant to you and the point you’re at on your reuse journey.

Tip one

You want to improve your system or your current way of reusing assets, right? So, the best way to demonstrate that the system is broken is by showing how, and you can do that is a very powerful way just by taking photos. The best photographs to get are down in your waste depot (or equivalent) and take photos of the assets sat in the skip, or assets sat waiting be scrapped, on a loader bay, or whatever the case may be. Visit your loading dock two or three times over the next month and get the evidence. This is powerful proof that can be used to your advantage.

You’re not limited to just the waste area, there are opportunities for photos in so many places, and one that can be really meaningful to your cause is during a building clearance.

On the day the building is cleared, go in and take a photo of the assets that are left over, now you can present these photos to your financial committee, your procurement committee, your facilities management or estates committee, and your sustainability committee to illustrate to them that the current system is broken. In a successful system, there shouldn’t be anything left over. Here's a guide that we've written to help you harness the power of the picture.

Tip two

Stop staff disposing of assets, literally forbid it. Organisations are in crisis, everybody is looking for savings, so audit how you currently dispose of assets.

It probably goes something like this:

1. Staff decides the asset is surplus to requirements
2. Calls up the porter or a custodial
3. They turn up between 3 and 14 days later and remove the asset
4. They skip it or put it in a dumpster.

Our way is better:

Add the asset to your online reuse system, which will then find a match on the estate. The asset is moved from A to B. Nobody has to do any further work and your reuse system gets a nice regular supply of assets. Here's a guide we wrote.

Tip three

You can't do this all by yourself. Reuse affects many departments, including facilities, procurement, sustainability and waste. It makes people's lives a lot easier and saves a lot of different departments a lot of money, but in order to do that, you need to get buy-in from all the relevant departments and secure their support for reuse. We've written a guide here.

Tip four

Get support from procurement, they’re your most valuable ally. Everybody thinks reuse is a waste tool – but this isn’t the case, the problem starts at source. Reuse should be viewed as a procurement tool, as it's making the procurement of assets quicker, cheaper, easier, better for the environment, and more efficient.

The procurement department will be strong allies when it comes to improving or setting up a reuse system, because they have the power to say no to people who try and procure new items. See our guide on how to get the procurement department bought in, and 15 things they can do to improve reuse.

Tip five

Get communicating. To change a process you need to communicate. Another good ally in this journey is your communications department – they can help you spread the word. They’ve got social media, they’ve got email newsletters, they’ve got physical literature and they’ve got word of mouth power that you can’t even imagine. It’s all well and good having the best intentions for reuse in the world, but if people don’t know about it, you’re wasting your time. Read our guide on delegating the communication of the system to your communication department.

Tip six

Roll your reuse system out, or made changes to your reuse system, incrementally. Start small, start low-risk. Prove the concept, prove the model. Then collect the savings and go back to the committees. Tell them what worked, what didn't work and move onto the next phase. See our guide to incremental roll out, and this great guide download too!

These tips are your keys to the answer, you just have to take them and unlock it.

Having a solid plan from day one is a great idea...