University of Liverpool embraces reuse with Warp It

Implementing organisational change is difficult.

You cannot do it alone.

This blog post is about putting together the right people for your culture change project. 

Making sure that they understand the vision, are willing to commit to the plan, and are as dedicated as you are to making sure that the plan gets delivered.

Let’s give a big hand to Andy Hay from NHS Tayside, who has joined us to talk about exactly why it’s simple math for procurement professionals to lead on reuse of furniture, equipment and supplies in institutions.

We talk:

• Sustainable healthcare.
• Why procurement should take an active part in encouraging reuse in an organisation.
• How they have made procurement savings of over £210K on a £10K investment.

We’re really pleased to share this conversation with you, as well as some of the great things that Andy has told us in the past about reuse at NHS Tayside.

Warp It proudly welcomes Ian Sommerville from NHS Humberside to discuss how a reuse operation can function from the perspective of a porter. This short and sweet interview will give you a quick insight into:

Q: What is circular procurement?

We tell you here.

Q: How do we start circular procurement?

We give you an easy win here.

Reuse is not given the priority it deserves

We’ve mentioned this notion before, that organisational sustainability and procurement strategies are lacking a focus on reuse. In this article we are going to explain some of the best practices for including reuse in strategic agendas, including how to build support for a reuse project and how to demonstrate its value.

All the reasons why reuse systems are low-hanging fruit for Smart cities

‘Smart City’ is a new buzzword in the world of sustainability, environment and urban planning, but why wouldn’t it be? It’s great to see nature and technology influence design in a way that they focus on working together for a better future. This whole sector is seeing massive growth and progression, with sub-sectors seeing huge opportunities to introduce new ideas and test out theories.

Warp It are pleased to welcome Andrew Mouat from Glasgow City Council to dive deeper into GAS, the Glasgow Asset Share Group. This is not our first article on this subject, in fact, you can see more material on this innovative enterprise here. In this article we see some new perspectives, in particular:

Low time input but big impact

I want to maximise your impact with ideas that are easy to produce but have a big impact. These activities are force multipliers for your reuse program! Just pick one to do every week or month and you will be chipping away at culture change without much effort.

One way to learn is to make mistakes. Another way to learn is to listen to a teacher. Another way to learn is to talk to people who have done it before.

By talking to others and sharing experiences we learn quicker. What works, what doesnt work. 

When Glenn Feagley, the Lion Surplus Manager at Penn State University said:

“At Penn State University, the Surplus Department can generate up to $2 to $3 million a year and I know a few more universities are doing similar.”

we knew we had to find out more.

America always seems to think big! We wanted to find out more about the surplus property sector and reuse within American Universities to see if there were any good ideas we could present back to our customers. We spoke to surplus and sustainability managers all over USA and produced this report- Read about it here. 

Thankyou to all the dedicated managers who helped us with this study.

For convenience we thought we would put all of the US Case studies in one place on line so here they are.