Surplus NHS supplies find new life helping those in need

Sally Attwood and Amanda Davies from Public Health Wales kindly volunteered to share their experiences for this interview. 

In this article we will be asking Sally and Amanda about a huge relocation project they’ve managed recently, where they maximised the reuse and refurbishment of office furniture, and how they’ve managed to:

Ready to introduce a reuse programme, or improve on the existing system?

Read ahead and find out the best practice for using a meeting plan to get more buy ins and increase support from your stakeholders.

Warp It’s vision since day one has always been to normalise the reuse of surplus assets across organisational estates, such as universities, councils and hospitals.

Despite the proven benefits of a reuse system in these organisations, we still see many opting to throw their surplus assets in skips and dumpsters on a daily basis.

Eventually this will stop. 

Scotland is leading the way on implementing the Circular Economy.

Our aim is to make reuse mainstream in organisations. 

We regularly talk to many people who are implementing a reuse system in their organisation and found that many are struggling with a whole host of issues. This ranges from securing buy-in and getting people on board with the project to communicating simple successes and achievements.

In this report we will address a variety of topics relating to the difficulties that can arise when trying to set up or grow a reuse project in any type of organisation. We will draw from a survey that we conducted of our customers and our bank of case studies.

This report will be of use to anyone looking to set up or improve a furniture reuse program or system, in particular:

• Surplus managers
• Procurement managers
• Sustainability managers
• Waste managers
• Service design managers
• Finance Directors
• Estates and Facilities Directors

Horsham District Council’s Commissioning and Performance and Sustainability teams won the Sustainability/Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative of the Year Award at the National Government Opportunities (GO) Excellence in Public Procurement Awards 2016/17. 

The team won for their innovative commissioning approach to the sustainable disposal of surplus office equipment when the council moved from its old premises to a new shared office space with West Sussex County Council in 2015.

Using Warp It, the commissioning project succeeded in disposing of a large amount of unwanted office contents without it having to go to landfill, greatly minimising the cost of disposal of the items.

Warp It opens the floor for Helen Peacock from Horsham District Council, who has been generous with her time in giving us some fantastic and in-depth answers to our questions. In this article you can expect to find important advice for: