Always putting people first 

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Always putting people first – every time

Environmental

Carbon Offset Businesses can cut their waste , save month and offset some of the carbon that they produce through their activities. By donating surplus items to a Freeshop a business can prevent items that they have produced from needlessly going to landfill. Not just that , those items will go to families in need providing a service , helping a family to concentrate their resources on feeding their families and heating their homes.
Climate Compensation Similar to Carbon Offset , however the term Climate Compensation also takes into consideration the ripple effect of donating to a freeshop. Items that would have been needlessly sent to landfill or burnt are used to by families, who in turn then don’t need to purchase unnecessarily cutting our consumption as a community.
Conservation With fewer items going to landfill, there is a lower requirement for disturbing the natural environment to bury our rubbish.

Environmental

Controlling Output
The more items that are re-used and needlessly recycled or destroyed helps us to lower our need to produce items that are not required. People have access to clothing , furniture , electrical and kitchen items which would have been put into landfill means that they don’t need to either go without or purchase new items. Therefore cutting overall our consumption.

Environmental

Cutting Waste Everything we describe above is cutting waste, every item we can prevent from going to landfill is a win for us. If you imagine that our surplus food bank every night of the week distributes 30 – 40 crates of fresh food that would have otherwise been waste and disposed of. The energy and effort taken to prepare and package and transport these items to then just throw them away (when people are hungry seems criminal). Having Freeshops removes that waste and helps

Environmental

CO2 Savings
There are formulas widely available on the internet on websites such as Click here to view CO2 formula for textiles. They mostly require the weight to be calculated. We weigh bags of donations as they come into our freeshop to keep a log. It is then possible to calculate with a degree of accuracy our CO2 savings. The national bodies (Neighbourly and Fairshare) who we collect surplus food for also give us statistics on CO2 savings based on data from the supermarkets.
Creative repurposing
By speaking to families in need we get examples everyday of where a family has found something in the freeshop that someone has wanted to dispose of that they can make use of, fix , convert or use for an alternative purpose. A good example being surplus fabrics on large rolls. Schools have visited us and taken away fabrics for students to use to make their own clothes. Cutting the waste and helping to educate the next generation.