Charity Shops Put Their Heart Into Diverting Waste From Landfill

Reusing furniture is great for the environment because, through finding a new home for that old sofa or bed, it will avoid landfill – and we’re not just talking about a few lorry loads, either!

The British Heart Foundation’s furniture and electrical shops are making a huge contribution to diverting waste from landfill. The charity’s outlets reused, resold or recycled 1.3 million items during the 2012-13 financial year!

This amounted to more than 26,000 tonnes of waste that might otherwise have been buried in the ground, including a staggering 100,000 TVs, as well as 61,000 sofas and 55,000 beds and mattresses. But this is just a fraction of the total waste items from the UK’s households that go to landfill, as Mike Taylor, the British Heart Foundation’s Retail Director, explains:

“It is estimated that the UK throws away over one million tonnes of household items into landfill every year. We want to encourage people to think more carefully about what they do with their unwanted furniture and electrical items by donating to us.”

Another great outcome of diverting items from landfill in this way is that the charity has been able to raise a large amount of money to continue its fight against heart disease. Furniture Donation Network wishes the British Heart Foundation well in all its future efforts to continue researching heart disease, and reduce landfill rates!

At Furniture Donation Network, we are similarly dedicated to diverting unwanted household items from landfill. We work with a range of local charities throughout the UK to make sure that they can also boost their revenues to continue their work, and the service we provide has a direct effect on homeless people, too. Here’s how it works.

If you have something such as a sofa or a bed that you no longer need, book a furniture collection with Furniture Donation Network. We will send out a collection team to pick up your unwanted items, and they will even come into your home to collect the furniture. No need to lift and carry it yourself, which is a great help, especially if you have mobility issues.

You can be assured of high quality customer service from our professional, fully trained teams, who all abide by a strict code of conduct; they will even wear protective shoe covers so as not to leave marks on your carpet!

As you might expect from a service that, with its commitment to diverting waste from landfill, cares deeply about the environment, we also keep an eye on our emissions. Our collectors will use GPS technology to make sure they find your house without taking any wrong turns.

Not only that, but Furniture Donation Network also provides direct help to homeless people who are transforming their lives through work and training with the support of Recycling Lives. This social welfare charity is run by the Recycling Lives social business, which also operates our service, as well as a range of other “Community Dotcom” schemes.

We provide training and work placement opportunities to the social welfare charity’s Residents, who may deal with collection from people’s homes, and distribution to charities.

So if you want to divert waste from landfill, help charities, and do something great for people turning their lives around, book a furniture collection with Furniture Donation Network! All we ask is that the furniture is in excellent or very good condition, to give charities the opportunity to raise a healthy amount of money when they sell it on!