New sustainability stats help charities support The Great Big Green Week

Lot’s of charities are taking part in The Great Big Green Week with hundreds of events across the country, from beach cleans to repair shop drop-ins all happening the week of 10th - 18th June. Charity retail is doing its bit by promoting the environmental benefit of buying pre-loved with customisable posters available from the CRA website.

To coincide Eproductive released their new Green Report to all EPRTouch clients giving landfill and carbon dioxide savings by shop or area for any time period.

Lynn Preece, Retail Area Manager at Severn Hospice said:

“We love the green reports - second hand and sustainable is what works for this generation. Being able to put a figure on each shops' contribution is such a smart idea. I’m sending out to shops today and some will be using in their window displays. It really does support our shops in their mission of sustainability.”

Estimating the amount of landfill avoided by reselling an item is calculated by assigning an average weight to each shop department.  When an item is sold the average weight for that department item is recorded and added to your total landfill saving. For example the default average item weight for the department Ladies Tops is 0.4kg and for Sofas it is 40kg.

To estimate carbon dioxide emissions research from a number of different sources, including academia, trade associations and specialist recycling companies, produced a default conversion value of 13.48kg of CO2 saved per 1kg of manufactured textiles. For example buying a preloved 0.4kg ladies’ top saves roughly 0.4 x 13.48 = 5.4kg of CO2 verses an equivalent newly manufactured item. Charities either use this default conversion for all departments or input their own estimates of different conversion factors for different departments.