Today I want to talk about our work with The British Heart Foundation.
It all started in June 2014 with one of my first goals with working at the University of Kent to set up a permanent #donation facility for our @UniKentStaff and @UKCStudent. After lots of research I decided to join with the British Heart Foundation as their first priority is to sell items as their original purpose in their charity shops nationwide, its only ever if an item of clothing comes in that physically cannot be resold in this way that it is cut into pieces and used as rags. There are other charities that do this as their first point of call and this is one of the main reasons that The British Heart Foundation were our winners!!
We started off with cardboard donation boxes in the accommodation areas during the chuck out period in mid-June and realised how successful these were!! Soon enough I was contacting The British Heart Foundation asking about permanent options. So during the summer we started installing permanent donation points at the accommodation areas ready for the start of the academic year. Now two and a half years later we have 8 donations points located in/outside of the bin compounds at Tyler Court, Darwin Houses, Woolf College, Marlowe/Jarman, Keynes, Tyler Court, Stock Court Parkwood and Parkwood Study Hub, covering all of the campus (map of locations available here)!
What I am really impressed with is the amount of items that students and staff have been donating. Items that can be donated are clothes, shoes, books, bags, CD’s, DVD’s, toys and homeware but nothing electrical so remember that please!!
Now is really the great part, I’m going to tell you how much we’ve donated! When the scheme was introduced in June 2014 the amount donated during the end of that academic year was 0.91 tonnes, in the academic year 2014-2015 a total of 7.93 tonnes was donated and in the academic year 2015-2016, 21.08 tonnes was donated! Can you believe the difference year on year? It’s absolutely incredible!!!
Let’s make it our goal to beat that 21.08 tonnes this year!! To help visualise 1 tonne is the equal weight to 1 small car, so if you could imagine 21 and a bit cars that would be the amount of items donated last year alone!
It would be impossible to show how grateful The British Heart Foundation are but believe me they are and I get regular thanks from them. The biggest thanks goes to all of YOU who are donating your unwanted items which is helping to fight heart disease.
To find out more about the work that The British Heart Foundation do please visit https://www.bhf.org.uk/ and donate as much as you can!
Have you been donating items? Send us a tweet to @UniKentRecycle of what you have donated in the past!