STEPS TO SUSTAINABILITY

This page is to demonstrate how Link to Hope is making gradual changes in order to become more sustainable. This is an evolving page so please come back and look at it on a regular basis.

SECONDHAND KITCHEN

We have been fortunate to have been donated a secondhand kitchen which will be installed at our head office. This will be enormously useful to our staff and our amazing volunteers who contribute their time on many occasions throughout the year for various events such as our kilo sales and shoebox packing and transporting. It will also allow us to host volunteer groups, such as a sewing team who, for example, could use donated textiles to make items to be included in our shoeboxes. Keep an eye out for a picture of the finished article when it has been installed.

PHOTOS TO REDUCE VAN JOURNEYS

When looking at sustainability within the charity, one area of focus was the journeys made by our vans. We have ensured furniture pick ups are grouped by area to reduce the mileage covered and also have adapted our furniture booking system requiring customers to provide a picture of the item being donated so we do not make unnecessary journeys for furniture we cannot take. In those cases our staff do provide alternative suggestions on what can be done with the item.

CLEANING PRODUCTS

We are purchasing products from the Ecover range to be used in the kitchens and bathrooms in all of our shops and head office.

RECYCLING BINS

We have introduced recycling bins into all our shops and into our head office to ensure we are reducing waste being sent to landfill or to more costly forms of disposal. We are also encouraging our staff to save their soft plastics and recycle these at their local supermarkets.

TEXTILE BINS

All our charity shops have textile bins where any large clothing items that cannot be sold are placed for customers to take for free. This reduces items going into rag bags or to landfill and, who knows, we may see some of the material returned to us as items made for shoeboxes.

KILO SALES

Any suitable items donated to our shops are displayed there for a short period of time and then circulated to a couple of our other shops for display there. Any suitable items still unsold are then sent to our head office where Kilo sales are held several times throughout the year.