Working with DS Smith Recycling, Furniture Village has fulfilled a zero waste commitment, recovering furniture for reuse and recycling remaining materials. This has resulted in 2500 tonnes being diverted away from landfill each year, the equivalent of 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Through this new partnership, Furniture Village plans to give items for re-use and deconstruction to help local communities, ensuring strict adherence to the waste hierarchy and in line with government targets.
Andy Long, group warehouse controller at Furniture Village, says: “Over the past five years, Furniture Village has been investigating ways to reduce its impact on the environment, by supporting charitable works via diverting useful furniture returns to local and national charities. This has the added benefit of reducing the environmental impact by diverting waste from landfill.”
Furniture Village collects over 20,000 items of old items of furniture from customers while delivering new stock, enough, on average, to fully furnish over 1300 two-bed flats annually. It works with two re-use organisations, providing items for re-use to help local communities and households in need of furniture.
A spokesperson for DS Smith Recycling comments: “We encourage all our customers to work towards zero waste, identifying the most suitable solutions for them. This is great news that Furniture Village is putting re-use at the top of its agenda and properly adhering to the waste hierarchy.”
In the past four years, Furniture Village has donated 3500 pieces of furniture to the British Heart Foundation (BHF), the biggest second-hand furniture and electrical retailer in the UK with 725 shops and over 153 dedicated furniture and electrical stores. This donation has generated more than £43,000 of revenue, which helps the BHF provide care, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of heart and circulatory disease. Put in context, one suite of furniture can fund a heart nurse for one day for a patient and one sofa raises enough money to fund one day of BHF heart nursing care.
In addition Furniture Village has started to work with the Furniture Re-use Network (FRN), a charitable organisation which supports and develops charitable re-use organisations across the UK. It aims to reduce poverty by providing access for households in need of furniture, white goods and other household items at affordable prices, as well as supporting re-use charities in providing training and work placement opportunities for people who are socially excluded from education, training and employment.
DS Smith Recycling helps Furniture Village to divert all remaining waste, segregating paper, plastics and card for recycling. As a result of direct deliveries, 96% of waste can be diverted and 4% through the use of multi-stop collection vehicles, reducing 975 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
