Bridgnorth furniture recycling

For people who like to be frugal there is nothing more disheartening that looking at the skip loads of perfectly decent household goods which get dumped into landfill every year.  It seems crazy to see fully functional items going to waste, when for many, items like microwaves and TV's are financially out of reach.

Well, it doesn't have to be this way.  There is a great little project in Bridgnorth trying to help solve this by linking up with poorer households who will make use of unwanted items.  It all began 5 years ago when entrepreneur Andy Smith starting offering house clearances, working out of a cattle shed on his fathers farm, with just a second hand Luton van.

It has since (through a combination of sheer hard graft, EU social funding, lottery grants, sale of scrap metal and other recycling, earnings from the sale of second hand goods and support from the Councils Waste Management team) evolved into a successful business which provides training and volunteering for the unemployed alongside paid employees.

They now trade as BDFS CIC - the CIC means 'community interest company' so there's no shareholders.  So whilst the company can trade and make profit, no profit can be taken out of the company and distributed as dividends.  So any surplus is reinvested back into the company and this in turn helps do more training and volunteering and more reuse and recycling of unwanted goods.   

Above is the vehicle used to collect unwanted items from all over Bridgnorth and Wyre Forest area.   All items are given a basic check to ensure they are safe, clean and functional before being sold at rock bottom prices to people on low incomes. Its a real Aladdin's Cave in their furniture shop (see below).   It's unbelievable is to think that much of this stuff would have ended in landfill.

It comes as no surprise when youth unemployment and landfill costs are both spiralling out of control that a project which deals with both is seen as really quite a good idea.  So the scheme is enthusiastically supported by many organisations who recently gathered to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the project.  We were very lucky on the day to be joined by a local VIP in the shape of Member of Parliament, Philip Dunne. 

Operations Manager for BDFS, Christina Wang showed us around the site, on Stanmore Industrial Estate which acts as their all in one depot, warehouse, training centre, repair workshop and retail unit.  A big thank you to all the councillors and volunteers who came along on the day to lend their support.

Of course if we want to see more of this happening, then its not enough just to do the right thing with your waste, we all need to make more of an effort to buy second hand goods where ever we can.