The Furniture Reuse Across Civic Amenity Sites (FRACAS) project, a pilot scheme from the Restore Community Projects organisation in Tottenham, diverted 306 fridges from landfill last year.
The fridges are collected from members of the public and from household recycling centres, refurbished, tested and sold through Social Services and community organisations mostly within the North London Waste Authority, with a six-month guarantee.
“Where dumped furniture, cookers and fridges used to rot at council waste sites before being burnt or crushed, the grant now lets us re-use them for benefit of needy people in seven North London boroughs,” said Austin Willett, general manager of Restore Community Projects.
The new money means the scheme can continue and introduce an outreach worker to develop community and agency partnerships and add more collection drivers. The funds will also help with promotion and operational costs, though the organisation aims to generate at least half of the money for these costs itself, partly through selling items back.
“The amount we sell items back for varies from around 50-80,” says Mr Willett. The fact that Restore Community Projects doesn't pay for used goods, means it can fund 50-60% of its work itself.
To continue raising this money, Mr Willet says the project has to keep a close eye on its supply and demand situation, “as we only have a designated amount of space, we have to be careful that we don't take too many goods in and then cannot pass them on. If this happens, it means we have to pay to have the goods removed and we would lose money.”
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