Planning an office refit does come with some environmental concerns such as what to do with all the old unwanted furniture? But even broken unwanted office furniture does not need to go to landfill. As part of our Furniture Clearance service, we can assess your unwanted furniture and categorise it as suitable for either selling, donating to the charity sector or recycling. But what happens then?
We recently spoke to Lindsey Parslow, Chief Executive of Business2Schools to find out more about her charity and the benefits of donating unwanted office furniture.
Hi Lindsey, can you provide an overview of Business2Schools and how the organisation came into existence?
Business2Schools was started by myself, from working with businesses, mainly financial services companies in Mayfair. They were constantly moving or upgrading office infrastructure with nowhere to rehome it and largely seeing it recycled. As a school governor and involved in Trustee and Directory roles in education, I saw an opportunity to upgrade schools with the things businesses didn’t want.
Lockdown provided me with an opportunity to take a sabbatical and register Business2Schools as a charity and reach out to businesses that were changing the way they worked. This was picked up by the BBC for the Make A Difference Give A Laptop campaign and saw hundreds of donations of laptops sent to the charity and thousands of schools sign up and register for help.
Schools register with the charity for free and everything given to them is free. End of life for office infrastructure is a much more frequent rate and is better quality than furniture in schools. Schools replace furniture over decades and their PCs and laptops are on a 10-year replacement. As business tech is replaced every 3-5 years there is a lot of purposeful life that schools can benefit from and it comes at a time when we still need to address the digital divide.
How does Business2Schools identify the schools or educational institutions that are in need of donated furniture?
Schools register with the charity through word of mouth, social media, press or sometimes because we have something in an area where we don’t have registered schools and we call round and find some. Schools can register here.
From this map of almost 5000 schools, we can pull off the details of all the schools in any given area and email those schools offering them an inventory of furniture. Those that want it send us a list of the things they would like and the clearance team deliver it to their school.
In addition to office furniture, does Business2Schools accept any other types of donations?
We accept most things you find in offices, including white goods, electricals, stationery, plants, artwork, bike racks, and things people leave on their desks, including books, staplers etc. We are one of the few charities able to pass on electricals. Laptops are critical for schools if we are to close the digital divide and remove digital poverty. We take clothing through our partnership with Bag2School and they will give the charity a cash donation for the weight of the clothing. We also have a partnership with ID Destruction for WEEE waste and shredding, again a cash donation for those items. The shredding we are particularly proud of as their 1-tonne blocks of shredding go into the UK toilet paper industry and are not shipped abroad. We are very conscious of making the biggest impact in everything we do to avoid anything creating unnecessary diesel or carbon emissions. Any items we can’t use, like servers and switches are resold and a donation goes to the charity.
Could you talk about the environmental benefits of donating second-hand office furniture? How does Business2Schools contribute to sustainability and waste reduction?
There are numerous benefits to donating to Business2Schools from office clearances.
- We are one of the best measures of ESG where social impact is difficult to evidence, but where donating to state schools gives exactly that measure.
- Recycling unwanted office items costs £200 per tonne in commercial recycling, and creates 1.5 tonnes per tonne in carbon emissions.
- Business2Schools delivers locally where possible to each donation, reducing diesel costs, and eliminating the carbon emissions in recycling or the cost.
- If school infrastructure comes from business offices, they save additional carbon emissions in the manufacturing process of furniture they would have bought. This has a double impact therefore on sustainability.
- The value of donating to schools means they can use more of their funding to invest in teaching and learning.
- Every class set of laptops we give to a school, saves 10 minutes walking to an ICT room, and 10 minutes on their 10-year-old devices loading slowly. Over the course of a year, each child gets an additional 6 lessons being educated.
Are there any specific requirements or guidelines for making donations?
Schools sign our waiver when they register with the charity so we are one of the few charities that accept electricals. We do charge businesses to rehome their things as it is a viable way to keep a revenue stream. No business is exempt from donating regardless of the nature of their business. All state-funded schools can register with us and we also accept schools that are outside the state system, like alternative provisions, religious schools, special schools and after school groups.
Are there any specific types of office furniture that are in high demand or frequently requested by schools?
There is a huge demand for soft seating to create nurture rooms and safe spaces in schools. This has risen since lockdown. Ergonomic chairs for teachers with bad backs and riser desks. Staff rooms are non-pupil or parent-facing and in desperate need of updating, as are school offices. School furniture is decades old and most things we have been offered we can rehome.
A couple of things we struggle with and would like to see removed from office design might be helpful to share with you. Large banks of desks with one single frame that can’t we separated are a problem in schools because they need more versatile furniture. Anyone who looks back on their school days can remember moving tables and chairs to create space for plays, or re-grouping desks to sit different groups of pupils together for various tasks or lesson planning. 1600mm desks are favourites as you can sit 2 pupils behind each one. We struggle with some wave desks too.
Another thing we would change is having pedestal cupboards at every desk in an office. If you have 1000 staff in your building, we can only re-home one in each classroom or office in a school, because it’s not something every pupil has at their desk. The average 1500 state secondary school would take a maximum of 100 peds. Lockers are much better and we don’t struggle to rehome these.
How many schools have benefited from donated office furniture so far?
We have 4900+ schools registered and a lot of them have been given laptops or furniture from Business2Schools across the UK. We haven’t got a definitive list because we need to upgrade our software and website to be able to invest in that much detail.
We have completed over 200 moves in the last 16 months and have 100 live projects of varying sizes we are working on at the moment.
Can you share a memorable story of how donated furniture positively impacted a school or educational institution?
There are so many fantastic stories, we are so proud of the impact we have made in schools.
We have re-homed a lift into a school where they had their first disabled pupil and were going to have to keep him in one part of the school. We have put electric riser desk donations into schools with pupils in wheelchairs so they can sit with all their classmates. We have replaced laptops in schools that had them stolen; we have replaced all the furniture and tech in a school in Chichester that lost everything to burst pipes. We helped a school get all their kids online following a landslide in the north; we provided sports equipment to a school that had theirs vandalised after a break-in.
We have provided teachers who have bad backs with ergonomic task chairs and we’ve moved classrooms and school offices to dual computer monitors which saves on printing costs. We’ve carpeted schools rather than see good quality carpet tiles go into a skip.
In some schools we have taken away digital poverty and given every child a laptop. Data at one school in Bexleyheath has seen them go from the bottom of the reading table to second in their local authority in 18 months.
We have donated laptops to refugee families, particularly Ukraine and Afghan and those children and their families are picking up English really quickly.
What are the benefits or incentives for donating to Business2Schools?
Businesses that donate to our charity can see exactly where their money goes when it comes to supporting education. Donations of furniture and tech help schools save on their budgets and it helps businesses avoid costly recycling costs and unnecessary carbon emissions.
We are one of the best measures of ESG, sustainability, the circular economy and climate change.
Looking ahead, what are the future plans and aspirations for Business2Schools?
The charity is keen to grow, we still need more business support and we need more schools on board. We are looking for funding and sponsors to take this forward. The Business2Schools platform is a proven success at a time when the circular economy and climate change is at the forefront of most business decisions.
