In light of its successful carpet tile reuse collaboration with Shaw Europe, the Salvation Army is issuing an urgent appeal for installers to fit reusable tiles in residential properties.
But he is yet to find a single fitter who’ll help. He fears this may be in part owing to a certain snobbery about products. Once fitters discover they’ll be working with reused product, they decline. ‘It would take a fit, professional fitter less than half-an-hour to fit a bedroom,’ says Richard. ‘It’s a matter of sticking down the tiles, cutting the edges, and away you go. It may take longer for some but the average fitter could do it in less than 30 minutes, tops an hour. And just think about the good you’d be doing. You’d help a single mother or father fit their kid’s bedroom – and you could put it all over your social media!’
The challenge, Richard feels, is the flooring industry is just too fast-paced. ‘There are very few fitters sitting around thinking they can spare a quick job in-between their scheduled projects.’
According to charity Furniture Poverty there are more than 1.2m people without a floorcovering in their home in the UK. Flooring is regarded as one of the essential items for any household to have along with bed and bedding, table and chairs, sofa/easy chairs, wardrobe/drawers, curtains, and blinds, washing machine, refrigerator, freezer, cooker, oven and a TV.
Richard’s appeal comes as SATCoL partners with Shaw Europe to create a carpet tile reuse network for the UK. As part of an agreed process, once removed from buildings, used carpet tiles can be transported to SATCoL donation centres to be sorted, graded, and made available to housing associations and local authorities. This ensures carpet tile is diverted away from disposal and made available for the most vulnerable in the community.
Shaw Europe manufactures sustainable carpet tiles in Sanquhar, Scotland and distributes flooring products throughout the UK, continental Europe and the Middle East. The Shaw product portfolio includes products that can be returned for free in the UK and closed loop recycled at the end of their life back into carpet tile.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for all carpet tile products and the Shaw-SATCoL partnership will offer a route for these carpet tiles so they can be reused. This new service will be offered as an expansion of the Shaw re[TURN] scheme for flooring.
The Salvation Army, which is best known for clothing collections. has 8,000 banks across the UK, collecting about 66,000 tonnes of textiles per year. It also collects electrical items, bric a brac and flooring. The SA was established in 1865 by William and Catherine Booth while SATCoL was established in 1991. ‘The SA helps a wide plethora of people,’ says Richard. ‘It used to be only those in need but in recent times more and more customers are coming to us from an environmental point of view.’
Collaborating with various companies and institutions has reaped rich rewards for SATCoL. This year it worked with London Marathon Events to collect a record 18.9 tonnes of discarded participant clothing being collected at April’s TCS London Marathon.
On 21 April, Salvation Army volunteers gathered clothing left behind by runners before the start line. This clothing was then transported to the charity’s processing centre in the East Midlands, where it was sorted and prepared for resale, reuse, or recycling. Profits from these efforts were donated to the Salvation Army.
‘It was a busy day for us,’ says Richard. ‘We were there to collect 9 tonnes of clothing but ended up with more than double that amount. The reason we partnered with the London Marathon is because we’re the only people in the UK who make fibre-saw machines. We have one now in our factory in Kettering, the first of its kind, which allows us to sort clothing by material type; they’re put through the machine and it uses light and laser to assign what the material is, then cleverly uses air to push those into different buckets. That means we can pre-sort 100% wool, 100% cotton or cotton mixes.’
In addition, the Salvation Army has a new facility in Cranston with a polyester recycling machine. ‘We’re also the first in the UK to be able to take polyester scrim material or textile and turn it to polyester pellets ready for reuse.’
As official corporate partners of SATCoL, Shaw and Forbo Flooring Systems, are driving the message of reuse in the UK market.
Says David Smith, managing director of Shaw Europe: ‘Over the years we’ve attempted to find a solution to ensure used carpet tiles avoid landfill and can be reused where they are needed the most. With over 40 large donation centres in the UK, there is a SATCoL outlet within an hour of most buildings in the UK. This makes used carpet tiles readily accessible and available for reuse. This partnership is a significant step forward to create a sustainable solution for end-of-life flooring.’
Richard adds: ‘It’s exciting to see this initiative come to fruition, and with passionate partnerships like this help people across the UK access affordable flooring, allowing them to transform where they live into a warm and comfortable home. It’s a great way to help protect the planet and repurpose material that would traditionally be classed as waste.’
When Richard bumped into Andrew Jackson, Shaw Europe’s business development manager director at last year’s Carpet Recycling UK awards, he quickly realised it was a meeting of minds. ‘We clicked on the reuse issue immediately,’ Richard recalls. ‘After talking it through, it was clear we had the same model in mind – taking tiles from existing buildings and seamlessly fitting them in residential properties. It was a ‘snap’ moment, which was perfect. The next step was for me to understand how it would work logistically. We have a large warehouse in Northampton and wanted to see how we could use it as a hub for loading and distribution.’
That model worked well so Richard and Andrew set their sights on growing their idea. ‘Shaw has been excellent about using its expertise in the industry to build a much stronger, robust model for the future,’ says Richard. ‘We sell the product in our donation centres which has become very popular with local people – who’ve never had flooring – looking for affordable product.’
Getting the scheme with Shaw off the ground took about nine months and was helped, says Richard, by Shaw’s passion and its determination to ‘get it right first time which is what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to seal the speedbumps along the way so we travel on a smooth road and Shaw has made that possible. My job is to try to create an omnichannel experience for customers, donors and corporate partners so we have everything in one place. The result is that you can come to a Salvation Army shop and buy clothes, IT, electricals and now your flooring.’
Richard points out SATCoL has also partnered with a well-known council which takes carpet tiles directly from SATCoL and distributes them to their residents via a referral scheme.
Were there obstacles associated with the takeback scheme? Richard lists three, starting with questions about quality. ‘There was concern uplifted tiles wouldn’t be of sufficient quality for residential homes,’ he says. ‘There were also logistical issues, namely getting the product from A to B. And then there was the fact this scheme – and the way we do things – wasn’t well-known in the flooring industry.’
The solution, particularly to the last-mentioned obstacle, is for more cooperation with the entire industry in order to ‘lift us to where we need to be. Which brings me back to the point about installers – we need them to work with us!’
Richard makes an interesting point about the waste hierarchy, a framework designed to prioritise waste management practices with the goal of minimising environmental impact. This hierarchy ranks waste management strategies in order of their sustainability and environmental preferability, guiding actions from most to least desirable. At the top of the hierarchy is prevention, which focuses on reducing waste generation at the source.
Following prevention is reuse, which involves using items more than once for the same or different purposes without significant processing. Examples of reuse include donating clothes, refilling bottles, and repurposing materials. Recycling comes next in the hierarchy, where waste is converted into new materials or products. Recovery is another important step in the waste hierarchy. This involves extracting useful materials or energy from waste, such as composting organic waste to create soil amendments or incinerating waste to generate energy. At the bottom of the hierarchy is disposal, the final treatment or placement of waste, usually in a landfill or through incineration without energy recovery. Disposal is considered the least preferable option owing to its higher environmental impact.
‘I believe reuse should sit outside that hierarchy,’ says Richard. ‘It should exist on its own merit because it’s giving a product a chance to live its life and beyond.’
Interestingly, Richard says the flooring industry is in the same place as the IT sector with respect to reuse. ‘Reuse is not where it’s at in IT – it’s more the crushing and recycling of goods. We identified a huge, growing number of British people who are digitally excluded which means they have no access to devices, can’t get online and don’t have the skills or confidence to use IT.’
SATCoL’s IT initiative offers a free, police and government-approved data wiping and reuse solution aimed at helping companies save money while giving unwanted IT equipment a new lease of life. This project securely destroys all data on devices like laptops, PCs, phones, and tablets, providing a safe and efficient way to dispose of used IT equipment while also repurposing them for resale. Donated equipment is distributed to SATCoL’s 240 retail outlets and sold through a dedicated e-commerce platform, making these devices accessible to those in need and raising funds for the Salvation Army.
Using advanced software, SATCoL ensures complete data destruction on donated devices, adhering to the UK Police standard HMG Infosec Standard 5, certified by the National Cyber Security Centre, as well as other international standards in the US and Europe. This thorough process guarantees data security and compliance with stringent regulations.
The service is fully funded by SATCoL, offering significant cost savings for businesses that currently pay for data destruction services. By participating in this initiative, companies not only contribute to a circular economy but also support the charitable work of the Salvation Army, making a positive impact on both the environment and the community.
SATCoL has also announced the launch of its latest fashion campaign, Reuse2Repurpose Fashion. It is designed to encourage more people to buy second-hand clothes. The campaign forward images for the Salvation Army Trading Company feature everyday garments donated to the charity’s clothing banks in the UK.
Contact Richard Shea at Richard.Shea@satcol.org to find out how you can contribute as a fitter.
www.satcol.org
www.shawcontract.com
