SBS21: Better Waste and Resource Management
Restore Harrow Green
This blog post has been produced for the Greater Birmingham and Coventry and Warwickshire Chambers of Commerce as part of the 2021 Sustainable Business Series: Net Zero campaign.
The Sustainable Business Series: Net Zero is the Chamber’s first campaign on environmental sustainability, which aims to share best practice, guidance and knowledge to increase business progress to net zero. In 2021, this involves 5 free online webinars taking place from the end of September and throughout October along with publishing thought leadership podcasts, videos and blog content. The campaign will feature a Sustainability Summit on 3rd November
Thanks to our Headline Sponsors – Aston University, Arup, Morgan Sindall and the University of Birmingham - all webinars and the Summit are free to attend. Interested parties can find out more and register to attend Sustainable Business Series: Net Zero events here, and the Sustainable Business Summit here.
Restore Harrow Green specialises in business relocation and removals service offering storage and IT relocation services, international moving, recycling and reuse.
With today’s emphasis on climate change and the importance of protecting the planet Restore Harrow Green are supporting businesses recycling of all types of furniture, IT equipment and other items that a company may wish to change when they relocate or refurbish their offices and other premises.
The Benefits of Reuse and Recycling
More and more organisations, along with the public, are recognising the growing importance of recycling as a way of avoiding landfill and reducing our CO2 emissions. Landfills release greenhouse gases such as methane (25-28 times more potent than CO2) and leachate, which damages soil, water and ecological health. Additionally, waste to landfill is taxed and expected to continue to rise, so it’s in a company’s financial and environmental interest to reduce waste to landfill.
The other major benefit of recycling and reuse is that items get a second life and benefit schools, charities and those organisations that can make good use of furniture and IT equipment that might otherwise be thrown away and end up in landfill sites. With the realisation that the world’s resources are precious the importance of recycling and reuse is rising up the agenda of many companies and their customers.
Our Advice
Our advice to our anyone who approaches us is to try and maximise their waste and resources efficiency internally before looking to relocate products and use recycling services. This can be done by following the Waste Hierarchy, which is a management framework for waste. The top (1) is the most preferred option , and the bottom (5) the least preferred.
- Prevent
- Reduce
- Reuse
- Recycle
- Disposal
Using this hierarchy as a checklist for your waste and resources decisions across all areas of the business can be a powerful tool to maximise waste and resource efficiency. We recommend working with employees in your organisation to identify where waste and resource efficiency could be improved and then creating a waste and resource efficiency plan, based on the waste hierarchy.
As you continually manage and improve your plan, you may need support on recycling, reusing or relocating certain products, that’s where Restore Harrow Green can help.
Case Study
A great example of the positive impact we bring to our client can be seen through a recent project with the University of Northampton, where they relocated their entire campus to a new site. This meant relocating furniture, equipment, books, and other materials. In the process Restore advised on how best to handle the project from a sustainability point of view.
By recycling and selling on where possible and donating unwanted items to charities Restore were able to help the university handle the project in a really positive and cost-effective way.
The statistics are impressive:
- 2,233,02 metric tonnes of CO2 were diverted because of the Restore actions
- 59% of all furniture was diverted to reuse thus avoiding landfill and helping other organisations to make use of ‘second use’ items.
- A total of 12,733 items were diverted from landfill and either recycled or reused by other organisations
- The Total Fair Market value of the items gifted to charities was £438,045.19
Restore Harrow Green has 200,000 square feet of storage space and its dedicated and knowledgeable staff will tailor a solution to the customer’s needs. They move 250,000 people every year and recycle 3,000 tonnes of no longer needed assets every year. They focus on helping customers solve their relocation and recycling needs in a cost-effective way while ensuring that everything is done in a way that is positive for the environment and, wherever possible, helps charities and other organisations to benefit from second time around goods.
If you would like to find out more about how Restore Harrow Green can help your organisation with relocation, storage or recycling please contact:
Elizabeth Russell
Head of Relocation Services – Restore Harrow Green
T: 0121 326 0810
E: elizabeth.russell@restore-harrowgreen.com