So as a large university of over 4,000 staff you’re probably wondering what do the Waste and Recycling Department do to help reduce the amount of waste that we produce?
With most members of staff this requires a set working space with a desk, chair, storage, stationary and the list goes on! Last year our attention was drawn to the company Warp-It who provide an online programme much like eBay where staff only can upload and claim items of furniture such as desk, pedestals, filing cabinets and stationary items for use on campus only.
When I log onto online stores such as eBay I tend to find lots of great things that I want to buy and can’t help but click on that big shiny blue ‘Buy’ button, and bam! Within 5 minutes I’m spending a fortune! See this is where Warp-It is really great, everything is free!!
Just in case you missed that…… yes… EVERYTHING IS FREE!
So really we have another one of those golden win win situations (like I was talking about in last week’s post) where as a University Warp-It is allowing us to reduce the amount of items that we purchase, reuse the items that we currently have on campus and recycle any items that are not quite up to scratch to be redistributed. We are also working with charities such as the British Heart Foundation to donate any items that we don’t think are at their end of life yet! See, we are conscientious like that 🙂
Warp-it was launched in January 2016 to University of Kent staff at the Medway and Canterbury campuses. So far we have 146 members, have saved 3.573 tonnes of waste being created, avoided 6.957 tonnes of CO2 being produced and saved a whopping £17,524 on the purchasing of new furniture around campus! Now we may have used yummy chocolates to get staff to sign up (have you realised that there is a theme here, I LOVE chocolate!) but I think that the benefits speak for themselves!
There is a small team of us that are working on this project and we would be more than happy to come and see any staff who are unsure on how to use the system and would like a bit of guidance (can we make our tea orders now please?!) so drop us an email on warpit@kent.ac.uk
Luckily we have 9 chocolates left and to claim all you need to do is register at www.warp-it.co.uk/uok using your Kent email address (but not the same password) and find the listing and claim. For those of you that miss out this time we will be putting up some Easter egg chocolates soon 🙂
For any term time staff who get the next month off, hope you have a lovely break and make sure to read our weekly posts, for those staff that don’t (like me sadly) why don’t you claim a chocolate and munch on it this afternoon with a cup of tea for a nice Friday treat!! Oh and make sure to also read the blog next week!!
Goodbye for now!