The opening of the shop has been supported by Bath and North East Somerset council and Avon Friends of the Earth. The two have been working with the SOFA Project and on other schemes to tackle bulky waste in the region with the support of 640,000 of funding from DEFRA.
The organisations involved in the project have been able to pay for two years' rent for the shop as well as supporting collection, storage and workshop costs.
Paul Townsend, operations manager for SOFA, said: “The council is signed up to the Zero Waste policy and the recycling done by the project will count towards the council's recycling rate.”
The SOFA project, founded 20 years ago, is based in Bristol but collects unwanted items from Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. Last year, the non-profit organisation collected 40,000 items, the equivalent of around 1,750 tonnes.
The furniture is collected for free and smartened up in one of SOFA's workshops. For electrical items the project has engineers who recondition and test the goods. Items that cannot be sold are stripped of their useful components before being scrapped. The reconditioned goods are sold to low income households including students and pensioners.
Subscribe for free