University of Liverpool embraces reuse with Warp It

This guide covers how to maximise the redistribution of surplus assets to the charity & not-for-profit sector.

The article is aimed at procurement, facilities, estates, waste and sustainability managers in large organisations, as well as those with responsibility for community outreach. 

You have surplus assets you don't have a use for internally- you have tried to donate to charity in the past but it has fallen over and now you are just paying to dispose of reusable assets.  

We will discuss why you should pass surplus assets to charitable organisations and we will explore several ways you can do this legally, safely, effectively and with maximum impact. We will also have some downloadable resources at the end to help you implement the advice in the article. 

The objective here is to help your organisation to increase your impact in the local and regional community- but also avoid waste disposal costs, increase landfill diversion by reuse and head towards zero waste.

If an item/s is heading for the skip, it makes sense for the facility manager to improve estates management to give furniture for free to not for profits- legally and safely. It is the same with office furniture clearance or decommissioning- it is good for waste minimisation and sustainability as well as your costs. 

Here's what we will cover:

• How to donate office furniture to charity
• How to point charities to the Warp It online portal
• How to maximise community leadership and set up your own charity network
• How to use your staff body to reach out to charities and make more meaningful connections

You can view the video or read the content. If you are already a Warp It customer skip forward to 4.14 on the video!

It's very easy to get started on Warp It. Here we show you how by breaking it down into a series of simple steps.

What will you learn?

• How to add an item.
• How to add items in succession. 
• How to claim an item.
• How to add an item to your wish list.
• How to allocate items internally.
• How to mark items for internal use only.
• How to mark items for external use only.
• How to set up a private group.

Following this, you'll know exactly how to use Warp It and be set up to effectively save your organisation money, and reduce its impact on the environment.

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

We have put reuse systems or furniture reuse programs into 250 large organisations in the public sector, central government, healthcare as well as private sector. These actions are the ones that take the least time but have the most impact. This will help you adopt circular economy practices and hit zero waste in no time!

Yes, organisations can even upcycle.

Within organisation we are often to stuck in our ways to come up with innovative and new uses for our waste streams. In this article we look at what one healthcare organisation is doing. We also give you access to a free download to use to help you think more innovatively about your problem waste stream items and start to approach zero waste.

We have talked in the past about how overwhelming projects can be at work - and we always offer solutions.

This blog post is about making cultural change in large organisations. We discuss one particular technique which is used all over the world, but which is seldom followed in organisations.  This can be applied to any behaviour change project and we use the example of a surplus asset reuse program. 

In this blog post we explain exactly how reuse, and the development of a reuse programme, can reduce procurement demand in the procurement department. This in turn gives staff and colleagues in the procurement department an opportunity to reduce their workload on administrative tasks and focus on more meaningful jobs.

Are you thinking "How do I set up a reuse system"? Or "How do I set up a reuse system for free"?

In this session we talk to Mike Howroyd from the University of Leeds about the reuse program he developed to trade surplus assets. In my opinion Mike has been leading the way in the public sector around reuse for the last 10 years. Google thinks the same- If you are in the UK and you google "Reuse and University" you will see Mike gets the top spot ahead of any other University (and Warp It!). He was the first one I had seen set up their own internal online platform.

He has been on his own reuse journey and in this article we discuss how to set up a high performing reuse system.You can download the University of Leeds Case Study at the end of this article.

MIke set up his own internal system which ran for 5 years and was very successful he then saw some additional benefits of using Warp it and migrated over to our system in late 2017.