A Recycling Project helping the environment & the homeless!

Church Housing Trust has launched an appeal to raise funds for an innovative furniture recycling project at a number of hostels for homeless people in North London, and has provided seed funding to get it off the ground.

The North London Furniture Recycling Project is run by staff and residents at Livingstone House, a 92 bed supported housing project in north London for ex-homeless men and women with mixed support needs.  It enables disused furniture and equipment from vacated sheltered & general needs housing to be recycled and refurbished for reuse by the hostel residents when they are ready to move on. 

Disused items like these would normally end up in landfill sites due to a lack of storage space and lack of funds to cover the cost of collecting and transporting these items to storage that is available.  Electrical items such as cookers, fridges and even kettles also need to be safety tested before they can be re-used. 

The North London Furniture Recycling Project provides initial fortnightly van hire to collect and transport these items to Livingstone House where they are stored in a portakabin until they can be reused by residents who are moving on into independent accommodation. The project also provides PAT testing of all unused electrical equipment.  

When residents move on from such hostels to independent living, they often have no possessions of their own and will be moving into a completely empty flat with no furniture, bedding or kitchen equipment. This greatly increases their risk of failing their tenancy and slipping back into the ‘revolving door of homelessness’.  The North London Furniture Recycling Project increases their chances of a successful reintegration back into the community. 

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