Green-Works is an award winning social enterprise and registered charity dedicated to helping the environment by diverting redundant office and school furniture from landfill by providing reused and remanufactured furniture to small business, charities, schools and community groups whilst providing training and real work experience to the unemployed.

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Building Futures Journal

24 September 2010

Learning from waste

The BSF programme provides a very real opportunity for this country to massively improve the learning experience of our children.  At the same time the high build standards will improve the environmental impact of those schools.  We believe though that there is one aspect of the programme where these issues have not been linked and where there are tremendous opportunities for synergy:  what to do with the furniture and equipment that is made redundant by the new build?   Green-Works believes that it can provide a solution that not only protects the environment but which can be used as a genuine way of creating awareness of issues such as the environment, international development and other cultures.  We believe that the education sector can set an example of positive action for the community and the environment that can set a pattern for others to follow.

The Green-Works Solution

Green-Works is an award-winning social enterprise and registered charity dedicated to providing a sustainable and environmentally friendly solution for your redundant office and school furniture. 

Our unique approach is to try every avenue to find a new home or a new use for all the waste furniture that we collect.  We do this even if it is not deemed commercially viable by others because we believe that there are greater benefits to the environment and to society in making the best use of resources than can be identified through a simple cash analysis.  We hope you will agree that our innovative methods make us the best in class for environmental disposal and benefiting society; a fact that has been recognised by our success in winning the Queen's Award for Enterprise - Sustainable Development 2008.

Green-Works can remove all types of furniture irrespective of condition from any office, school or college.  We can help with any size of contract from the smallest classroom to the largest college or campus.   In addition to the obvious things like desks, tables, chairs and storage units we take coat stands, pictures, stationery and electrical items - so it all goes in one go.

Our aim is to maximize the benefit of the furniture by reusing or remanufacturing as much as possible:

• We find schools and other local organizations such as churches and scout groups who need the furniture
• We export large amounts of furniture to schools and other groups across the world from St Kitts to Sierra Leone and from Rumania to Pakistan.
• We make a whole range of furniture from old desks and wardrobes that cannot be used as they were originally designed
• We repair and refresh furniture that is basically sound but not attractive any more.
• We remove whole components that can be reused in other furniture or in DIY projects. Things like castors, screws, foam, fabric and chipboard tops can be put to all sorts of different uses.

Once all these options are exhausted we separate what is left and recycle everything we can.

Whilst recycling is an excellent way of handling things that are not wanted we believe that reusing or remanufacturing is even better because it can help more people and uses far less energy. Whichever way; for Green-Works, landfill is simply not an option.

We can provide a full service to schools of any size whether they are being refurbished or rebuilt under the BSF programme.  This includes:

• A comprehensive Legacy Audit to assess your existing furniture and its fitness for purpose
• The removal of all your unwanted items for thorough and sound environmental disposal.
• A full report to schools providing you with information about where your furniture has gone and who it has helped.
• We can even provide storage for furniture that you still want to keep but which needs to be moved in the short term

How do we do it?

This is the other thing that makes us unique.  We work with expert partners such as Transformation UnLtd, Harrow Green and EFA to provide you with the best possible outcome.  Working with them we operate a two phase triage system. The first phase takes place on-site where reusable furniture and equipment is separated from that which needs to be recycled.  The second stage at our warehouses determines exactly who your furniture will help.

Green-Streaming

Our onsite furniture streaming process ensures that all redundant furniture is assessed and graded so it can be sent directly to the most appropriate place for reuse or recycling with the minimum cost. These processes enable Green-Works to improve efficiency, cut transport costs and importantly reduce carbon emissions. Our two-phase triage also enables us to put your redundant items to their best use, separating that which needs to be recycled from what can be re-manufactured or re-used.

We have already helped dozens of schools across the country to get the most out of their redundant furniture.  With Transformation UN Ltd we have helped schools in Crewe, Northumbria and Lewisham. 

Case Study:

Ashford Christ Church school Kent were under going refurbishment and wanted to ensure the furniture helped as many people as possible, especially as the furniture and equipment still had quite a lot of life left in it.

The Solution 

Green-Works overseas programme matched Ashford's' furniture to the needs of several schools in a town called Waterloo in Sierra Leone and shipped 2 enormous containers full of furniture to them.

The furniture from Ashford has been distributed between 5 schools across the Waterloo Region and will help many children for many years to come. David Weatherstone from Ashford School believes "Recycling has to be what we teach our children today or they will soon find that this planet we live on cannot continue to sustain a culture of use and just throw away. Like many other schools we are moving towards becoming greener and recycling of all items however small can only help towards that aim."

We need a quote from a teacher in Waterloo.  We can make up the quote but we need a real name and a real school.

The biggest challenge we have faced with this work is getting the legacy furniture to be given a higher priority.  Where we can audit the furniture early in the process and discuss the priorities with the school concerned we can achieve really tremendous results. However, all too often the furniture is left to the last minute and the potential benefits in the furniture are lost because the contractors just sends it to landfill as the quickest way of getting it out of the way.

So our call is for old furniture be considered earlier in the process, in that way it will not be an obstacle it will be an opportunity.  An opportunity to help another community and to pass on a valuable set of lessons to the children whose school you are improving

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