We are very pleased to welcome back Elaine Gray, Purchasing Lead at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

You may remember we interviewed Elaine about her success in refurbishing 300 bins, saving £18,000 in the process, and about her organisation's experience of Warp It. Now, she is here to talk about some great news, having successfully been accredited the Revolve Standard.

Good to know: ‘Revolve is a re-use quality standard for shops who sell second hand goods in Scotland’

Hi Elaine, I was hoping you could tell us about Revolve?

‘I was in a meeting and someone told me that Revolve was a reuse project that Zero Waste Scotland were running. I inquired and they told me that it was mainly for shops on the high street, second-hand shops that were selling furniture rather than just basically giving it away for free. The way we are operating, however, the principles were exactly the same.’

‘I pursued it and pursued it, and eventually, Zero Waste Scotland came out, the manager, Sam, came from Revolve to see what we were doing within our Hillington Hub. She was completely blown away and absolutely agreed with me that the principles were exactly the same, however, there was no money passing hands with us. What she did was she went away and she had a think about it.’

What happened next?

‘They tweaked their registration form for us so that the process was slightly different from a shop applying for accreditation. Is there adequate health and safety within the premises? How are we receiving goods? How are we going to deliver them? We had to change a few things before we were able to be given the accreditation, and we had to prove that the items that we were receiving were being checked in accordance with the Revolve accreditation. We went through all this and we ticked all the boxes.’

They were very supportive in the process I’m guessing?

‘Basically, we got someone to come out from Revolve, Zero Waste Scotland. They went over everything with us to make sure that we were abiding by their rules and then we were issued with an accreditation. I think it took us, in all, maybe about 10 months to get it all together. It was basically just being able to meet and tick the box for each item that's on their accreditation.’

‘There's equipment that they deem very high danger that we don't deal with it, like glass cabinets, because it encompassed shops and going into people's houses. For instance, if it was a piece of glass furniture, then that's a high danger item, but we don't have those. We had to just cut down the amount of items that they had to a very small limited items for us. We had to make sure that our checks were in accordance with their accreditation. For instance, Charles' has a microwave with a radiation tester to make sure there's no radiation leakage and things like that. He's got a whole myriad of things he's got to check.’

Where did Warp It fit in to this situation?

‘Well, Warp It comes in because Revolve have to be able to audit the items that we had. Your system generates a number, so we put the number on the Revolve sheet to say that this is the number for this product and that it's been checked in this state. Charles has checked it and there has been nothing noticed, no issues. It all marries in with the whole reuse ethos. We are the first Health Board in Scotland to be issued with that.’

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