ReStore are proud to be part of the Re-Use Network, congratulations to the London Re-use Network on the further investment.
The London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) has announced further investment of £1.25m in the London Re-use Network after exceeding its re-use and recycling targets for a third consecutive year.
The new investment of £1.25m is being made in London Reuse Ltd (LRL), the network’s central operating company. The investment, made up of a small £100k loan as well as a £1.15mrevenue participation agreement, will see the network grow its service offerings and, in particular, increase its retail presence.
Cllr Bassam Mahfouz, from London Borough of Ealing and the London Waste and Recycling Board member said: In order to accelerate the move towards a circular economy in London, re-use, repair and remanufacturing will have ever greater roles to play in our lives. LWARB’s investment in the London Re-use Network means the capital will keep leading the way in making re-use mainstream.”
Charles Craft, managing director of London Re-use, said: “Having established key infrastructure improvements the investment will now allow the network to grow its services throughout the capital and provide a greater diversity of benefits to Londoners whilst achieving environmental and social benefits for all.”
Charles Craft, London Re-use – “Having established key infrastructure improvements the investment will now allow the network to grow its services throughout the capital and provide a greater diversity of benefits to Londoners whilst achieving environmental and social benefits for all”
Both the Mayor of London’s Municipal and Business Waste Strategies give significant weight to increasing opportunities for re-use, identifying the third sector as an important growth area as well as singling out the London Re-use Network as a lead delivery partner to achieve this.
More recently the Mayor’s London Infrastructure Plan 2050 identifies the massive economic value and opportunities that can be realised through better management of London’s waste.
Matthew Pencharz, the Mayor of London’s Senior Advisor – Environment & Energy and London Waste and Recycling Board member said: “With London’s population increasing by over 100,000 a year and commodity prices likely only to go up, London needs to become more resource efficient.
“A central part of the Mayor’s London Infrastructure Plan is looking at how we can accelerate the transition to a circular economy. LWARB’s investment into the London Reuse Network will divert thousands of tonnes of material that would otherwise be disposed of, saving Londoners money and carbon, and illustrating the value of a circular economy.”
London Reuse Network members currently work with a number of London waste authorities, and London Re-use Limited hopes to grow this over the coming months with the support of the new joint London Waste Authority Support Programme announced by LWARB and WRAP earlier in November.
LWARB has a commercial approach to supporting the third sector, directing its investments in a way, which encourages third sector organisations to move away from grant dependency. This new investment announcement uses mechanisms to foster robust business practices, and includes a refinancing of LWARB’s existing £650k loan to London Re-use.
If you are a resident of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and, Waltham Forest, then you have a chance to donate your unwanted items and/or collect items you can re-use for free.
It is estimated that in 2013/14 NLWA’s waste prevention programme diverted 8,000 tonnes of waste from disposal. This is equivalent to the amount of waste produced by 9,500 north London households. Find out more by visiting www.wiseuptowaste.org.uk.
HARINGEY on Saturday 18 October (12.00 to 3.00 pm) at ReStore Community Projects, 18 Ashley Road, Tottenham Hale, London, N17 9LJ
You can GIVE away your unwanted items from 12 to 1.45pm and/or TAKE things you can use from 2 to 3pm. Please note that you can give: books, DVDs/CDs, garden ware, IT, tools, clothes/shoes, small furniture, small electrical items and toys. We also accept: large furniture and white goods. We will NOT accept broken and unsafe items.
Following events will be taking place in:
ENFIELD on Satuday 25 October (2.00 to 5.00 pm) at the St Mary Magdalene Church, Windmill Hill, London, EN2 7AJ
WALTHAM FOREST on Saturday 1 November (2.30 to 5.30 pm) at the Harmony Hall, 10 Truro Rd, London E17 7BY
CAMDEN on Saturday 15 November (12.00 to 3.00 pm) at the Sidings Community Centre, 150 Brassey Road (Off Maygrove Road), London, NW6 2BA
BARNET on Saturday 22 November (12.00 to 3.00 pm) at the Green Man Community Centre, Strawberry Vale, East Finchley N2 9BA
HACKNEY on Sunday 23 November (2.00 to 5.00 pm) at the Chats Palace, 42-44 Brooksby's Walk, London E9 6DF
ISLINGTON on Saturday 29 November (12.00 to 3.00 pm) at the Aubert Court Community Centre, Avenell Road, London, N5 1BL
Upcycled, reused and even recycled, many unwanted items begin a new adventure when collected by ReStore Community Projects. Local waste management company, LondonWaste Ltd, has been a long-time supporter of upcycling and ReStore’s role in diverting good quality, reusable items of furniture and white goods from waste.
LondonWaste runs several Household Reuse and Recycling Centres in North London where residents are encouraged to drop off their unwanted furniture and other household items for upcycling, reuse or recycling.
John Kutner (ReStore Chair of Trustees) & David Sargent (MD London Waste)
LondonWaste is now enhancing its partnership with Restore by providing funding which will allow Restore to develop its operations and ensure that more unwanted items can be reused locally instead of being sent to landfill. ReStore, which is a registered charity, makes furniture collections from homes in Enfield, Camden, Haringey, and Waltham Forest. It then refurbishes the items ready for sale from its Tottenham showroom at reduced prices for people on benefits. The items then begin a new journey as they are reused by new owners or even turned into new products.
John Kutner, Restore Chairman said We have been providing a valuable service since 1996 and are pleased that with LondonWaste’s support, we can continue to develop our operations for the benefit of both the local community and the environment.” David Sargent, Managing Director of LondonWaste said “In our modern society, much is discarded and it is important that organisations like ourselves, Restore and others, provide a complete service that recognises that waste is really a resource.
As well as LondonWaste, ReStore works with a number of other specialist partners who share common aims; to ensure that quality furniture and repairable white goods remain within the local community as a useful resource and, in turn, reduce the amount of raw materials and the energy used to make new products. Such partnerships support local people, increase their buying choices, encourage recycling & reuse and reduce the amount of furnishings that end up in landfill.
As partners, we look forward to driving the future growth of north London’s reuse upcycling and recycling
“I used to go to the national reuse conferences,” remembers Richard Featherstone. “Everyone would be saying, ‘The council’s not listening. No one’s listening. Everyone’s got other priorities.’ And that has changed. People want to talk to us. Not only are we approaching councils and housing associations, but they are approaching us. That’s new.”
Featherstone is development manager of the London Re-Use Network. This year, in case you hadn’t heard, he shot up 67 places to 29th in the “Hot 100”, the list of the biggest cheeses in waste management according to Resource magazine. Even so, 29th looks like scant acknowledgement of the fact that, by linking many different charities who collect, repair and sell unwanted items, and connecting them to a single disposal Hotline number (and website), the LRN has shown for the first time how reuse can create jobs (44 so far in the LRN), reduce waste, and really, seriously work.
Until recently, your local authority had neither the resources, nor the reason to push reuse. How were they going to mend your washing machine or sell your sofa? Gradually, however, European and domestic legislation has raised both the cost of landfill, now taxed at £80/tonne, and recycling targets. (Only determined lobbying got reuse included as part of “recycling”, or else councils would have been effectively penalised for supporting it.) As a result, for councils at any rate, not re-using began to become the bigger hassle.
And so, in 2009, after much badgering, the Greater London Authorityfinally included reuse in their waste strategy. At the time, among those charities that measured it, 4,000 tonnes of goods were being reused around the city each year. In 2010, the LWaRB ( London Waste and Recycling Board) awarded £4.3m to set up the LRN, which gathered those charities together into a tighter unit that would now collect, mend and sell pretty much all furniture, household appliances, electronic goods, bicycles and paint. The network has evolved to the point that residents of eight participating boroughs just have to contact the Re-Use hotline or website to have their stuff removed from their home for the same price as a council bulky waste collection (generally around £20). Today the rate is 12,000 tonnes, and the only thing keeping it from rising faster is the shortage of vans.
Repairing a discarded washing machine. Photograph: Re-Use Network
Reusers from Birmingham have been in touch to find out how they can develop a network of their own, and ideas are being swapped with the energetic and forward-thinking Zero Waste Scotland. Links are also being formed with some of the smaller groups working independently around the country. “We have interest from all over the place,” Featherstone says, and you can see why. This, pretty clearly, is how it’s done.
I meet Featherstone one sunny morning at one of the links in the chain at Smugglers Way waste transfer station in Wandsworth. Here, alongside the usual public recycling bays, is a new area devoted to collecting items for reuse. Behind the scenes, with the help of Groundwork, the LRN has also fitted out Re-Work, essentially two sheds - one with a designer and her team, who rebuild and respray furniture to make it valuable again, the other with engineers trained in mending cookers, fridges, dryers, washing machines and dishwashers. A row of machines, all white, shrink-wrapped and guaranteed for a year, sits outside on the Tarmac, waiting to be taken away in the next charity van. Often, Re-Work’s manager Keith Perdicou tells me, there is very little mending needed.
A worker in Wandsworth, London, takes a welcome break from rebuilding and respraying furniture. Photograph: Saira Niazi/Groundwork
“We get washing machines in, and the first thing the boys do is take the filter out. They’ll find there’s five pence stuck in the water pump. There are several different things like that. Probably 50% of the machines that come through we put down as ‘no fault’.” Featherstone reckons 25%, but they basically agree: it’s plenty.
Even when a repair is needed, it is often simple. Replacing the switch on the door, that’s a common one, or even just cleaning out the rubber seal. (They get mouldy after months without hot washes or biological powder.) Indeed it is Featherstone’s dream that Re-Work might soon form a partnership with a manufacturer, through which they would exchange what their engineers learn about appliances in the real world for the sponsorship of another engineer. What was once a few guys tinkering with a few machines in scattered sheds is now a professional outfit that sends out around 80 mended appliances each week. It could easily, they believe, be more.
For reusers, the wasteless nirvana would be something called “the circular economy”. And since 2012, the designers Sophie Thomas and Nat Hunter have been been running a scheme, The Great Recovery, which is trying to realise it, by encouraging other designers to create products that will never become junk. While London’s reuse network is already looking practical, Thomas admits that the global circularity she seeks is still a long way off. “It’s just beginning to be grappled with, I think,” she says. “It’s such a big, complex thing.”
There are laws that discourage reuse, for example. The Trades Descriptions Act prohibits you from calling a product “new” if it contains even one reconditioned part. Safety laws are another problem: a part certified safe in the US might not be legally safe in the UK, despite being, you know, safe. Thomas points out that many firms want to reuse - both to impress consumers and to take control of the resources they need, at a time when the supply of raw materials can be intermittent. “In 2010 a third of the profit warnings that came out of the FTSE 500 were resource price related,” Thomas says. “So businesses are feeling the pressure.”
Loading a chair on a Re-Use lorry. Photograph: Simon C Ford/Re-Use Network
Cleverer laws would help. Companies could be required by law to design more carefully so that parts can be easily reused. They could get licensing fees when their components are reused in new machines, giving them economic motivation to design components worth recovering. There might also be ways to encourage more leasing of products all round, which is inherently less wasteful. “We were talking to BAM construction about a road they had built in the Netherlands,” says Thomas by way of example. “They were paid when the road was in use. If it broke, or if it got pot-holes and they had to repair it, they lost their income. So the incentive was there for them to make a road that would last.”
In West12 shopping centre, in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, customers are prowling around the floor of a huge shop, eyeing attractively presented tables and chairs, clean sofas, or a neat row of fridges and washing machines, much as they might in DFS or Dixons. This is the end of the reuse cycle - and also the beginning. The shop was opened last February by Furnish, a charity affiliated with the LRN who collect, distribute and sell reused appliances and furniture. Most items come through the Re-Use Hotline, some from Re-Work, and some through the dealer-takeback scheme, in which retailers remove old items from people’s houses when they deliver new ones. It is the biggest reuse shop in London and, so far as anybody here knows, the biggest in Britain.
The prices here really are unbeatable, and there are still deeper discounts for customers who receive benefits. They can buy a good double bed with a new mattress for about £100, a reconditioned Bosch washing machine for just £150, or something less illustrious for £80. “If it’s nice, things they go really quickly,” says Andrea Feller, the store manager. Although in truth most things go soon enough, and there’s a high turnover of stock. “There’s always new bits every day,” she says, “usually around a van full".
There’s not the salesman sparkle about Furnish that you might find in a conventional high-street showroom. Nor the chutzpah of Petit Miracles, the upcycling store upstairs. Yet it is dignified and practical, and very much a showroom. Part of the philosophy here is that people need to pay a small amount for their goods in order to take pleasure in owning them, and thus feel like taking care of them too. Charles Craft, who is managing director of London Re-Use, remembers a 22-year-old woman visiting Furnish with a £180 voucher from her housing association. She bought a washing machine and a fridge, and even had enough left over for a table and chairs, but afterwards was found crying. “She had never dreamed in her life she’d be able to sit at a dining table and have a meal,” Craft says afterwards, back out among the crowds. “It’s great to engage in political forums and with boroughs, but when you actually see people benefiting …” I lose his words among the hubbub.
Correction: an earlier version of this article said that the funding for the LRN had come from the GLA. This has now been corrected: the source of the funding was the LWaRB ( London Waste and Recycling Board).
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