Today I really want to brag about the success that we have had with Warp-It at our Canterbury and Medway campuses. As it’s the summer where staff may find they are moving their offices around and wanting new bits and pieces, I thought that this would be the perfect time!
Warp-It (short for Waste Action Reuse Portal) started in 2005 as a free cycle- style email ring between members where unwanted furniture was advertised. In May 2012 the software service was launched and now there are currently over 1000 schools, 1000 charities, over half of the UK University sector, councils, the NHS and private sector businesses that are using the service.
Warp-It is an online service that is free to members where unwanted items such as furniture can be advertised for reuse. Currently the University of Kent are using this as an internal service only but there is scope to extend to join up with other accounts to share items between organisations.
In the simplest terms Warp-It is a very similar to eBay (and who doesn’t like a good bargain on eBay!) where staff upload pictures of their unwanted furniture, fill in a description and upload the items onto our dedicated University of Kent Warp-It page for other staff members to claim for free. Now that we are all at a time where we are needing to save money, this is such a brilliant and easy way to do it!
Once an item is claimed the new owner emails EstatesLogistics@kent.ac.uk to arrange the delivery of the items, this is a win win situation for us as we are transferring items from A-B rather than from A to store to B. However we do have lots of items in storage that are on Warp-It just waiting for a new home. 🙂
So far the service has helped save £43,746 on purchasing new furniture costs, avoided 7.705 tonnes of furniture sent for recycling and saved 16.785 tonnes of Co2 emissions. This is equivalent to 7 cars off the road or the planting of 22 trees.
These aren’t the only brilliant facts that I am going to share! Since the programme was launched at the University Of Kent in January 2016 we now have 215 members and have had 226 items claimed and reused either at the Canterbury or Medway campus.
It really easy for staff to sign up all you need to do is go to www.warp-it.co.uk/uok and register for an account using your University of Kent email address but please remember to use a different password to your Kent account. During the sign up process staff are asked to agree to the terms and conditions including that furniture is for sole use of the University and therefore is not permitted to be taken home. From there on you can claim away to your hearts content!
If you have any questions on how to use Warp-it please email warpit@kent.ac.uk where myself Carol and Jenny (we like to call ourselves the Wonderful Warp-It team!) will be happy to help.
Happy #reusing! And follow us on twitter for updates.
Have you used Warp-It? Let me know what you think in the comments section below 🙂