Social Sustainability
Social Sustainability
The Team creatively repurposes furniture items, promoting sustainability and environmental consciousness while delivering our core charitable initiatives.
Through upcycling, we strive to breathe new life into discarded pieces, fostering community engagement and strongly advocating for responsible consumption.
Huge thank you to RO Group who have generously provided us with much help across the board and in this instance specifically Ana Bajri, their inhouse Sustainability expert for her training and guidance in all things relating to our sustainability.
Influencing/Awareness
Through all our engagement with the public, social media platforms, markets and events we continuously encourage positive behaviour and drive for transformation.
Training and skill sharing for other charities and community focused projects
We work closely with other charities to provide lifelong learning and skills for their staff teams and clients/service users. Since 2017, Team building and awareness days are held several times each year for staff and volunteers at partner agencies that refer their clients to us.
Council Recycling Centre and Reuse shop
In the summer of 2023, the Hertfordshire County Council relocated one of their recycling centres to a newly built facility. The new site is less than 200 metres from our workshop and we have developed a close mutually beneficial working relationship. We encourage people to stop by our workshop on their way to the site to let us take a look at what we can rescue. Additionally, we have an agreement that allows us to take things from their reuse shop if they have been there for over one week.
Joy and Happiness at difficult times
Often we are offered furniture by people when they have lost a family member or close friend or when a person is moving from their home into care. We have much empathy and talk about how the furniture will provide training and skills for the vulnerable adults we support and when transformed and sold will bring the new owner many years of joy and pleasure.
Equality, Diversity and inclusivity
Recover has robust and regularly reviewed policies ensuring our workshop and reputation is vibrant and dynamic.
Free fabric giveaways
We have a free fabric Saturday several times each year where people come along and help themselves.
We have had the free fabric days since 2016 with the exception of ‘lock down’ periods through the pandemic. As awareness about our charity has grown so has the popularity of the fabric giveaways, we now have up to 200 visitors for these events and in February 2024 we gave nearly 5,000kg of fabric and materials away. These fabrics are enjoyed by members of the community for their own crafting projects but importantly other charities, schools, hospitals and hospices come along and collect as much as they need for supporting their own services. We were especially delighted to find out that a lady who attends sends our fabrics via BA to Ghana. BA let her organisation use up space on the flights when available. We have received thankyous and photos from small villages where they are using our fabrics to make clothing and other essentials.
