Welcome to the sixth in the series of what happens to our… Today we are going to be talking about reuse items with Warp-it, which is a staff reuse system on campus for items such as furniture and office supplies (excluding electrical items).
The University joined Warp-it in January 2016 with items being added to the system from being held in storage in Estates and an off-site storage facility. It took many months to get the off-site storage facility emptied and lots of time was taken to talk to different groups of staff on campus such as School Administration Managers to make staff aware of this new scheme. Warp-it is free for staff to use and the website looks like eBay in that there are listings of items that are available and show their location, size and other information. Items are required to stay on site as they are the University property unless donated to a third party such as a school or charity or are being donated to staff to use at home. The system calculates savings including total costs (a mixture of item cost and administration cost from purchasing), waste diverted from disposal, co2 saved, cars off the road and trees equivalent.
To date our savings are an incredible £794,281 total costs, 129 tonnes waste diverted, 381 tonnes of co2 saved, 165 cars off the road and 522 trees equivalent.
We have 749 members who are able to claim items and to also upload items for reuse. The beauty of this scheme is that we are reducing the need for purchasing of new furniture. In the past the Interior Services team have been able to kit out refurbs fully from Warp-it furniture! Warp-it allows you to create a want list which we can then use to contact you if an item becomes uploaded onto the site.
Warp-it is super easy to use and it saves you money, what more could you want? To understand further about how you use the system, including a step by step guide to uploading and claiming items please look at our University of Kent User Guide. We also have details on the Waste and Recycling webpages and the Interior Services and Signage pages. We have a dedicated email for the University of Kent Warp-it Team which you can contact at any time if you have any questions.
Join us next month to find out what happens to our….batteries
If you have any questions or want to find out more please reach out through our Instagram, twitter or email and there is also lots of information including the A-Z of waste on our webpages.