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The Sofa Project are a furniture and electrical goods recycling service based in Bristol that sell new and secondhand products.

They have been a using the R3-Online recycling software for quite some time now, so when they decided that they needed an update to their existing website, they came to Urban Element who as well as being behind the environmental software, they also have a vast amount of experience in website design.

The Sofa Project felt that their existing site had started to look very out of date and no longer reflected the size of the charity. As part of the creation of this fresh new site they had also identified the need for the addition of an e-commerce section, allowing their products to reach a much wider audience. This was in line with the expansion of the charity who had previously operated from just two shops in Bristol but now have the ability to sell products nationally and deliver to anywhere in the UK.

The new website is now live and everyone at The Sofa Project are really pleased with the results and looking forward to the challenge of delivering nationwide.

This week sees the start of the seventh annual recycle week and this year’s theme is Home and Away.

In previous years the focus of Recycle Week has predominantly been on domestic recycling but this year the focus has shifted to encourage recycling at work and when you’re out and about. 

The Recycle Now website is full of tips and advice on how you can get involved in Recycle Week and also contains information on a variety of recycling solutions. They have also teamed up with Keep Britain Tidy and their Tidy Up campaign to show what a difference tidying and recycling can make. 

At the R3-online Office we have been trying out various ways to make our office greener, from changing the light bulbs to making better provisions for recycling our waste material. We are also pretty big fans of things like Google docs to share documents without the need for printing. 

For tips on how to recycle in your office visit take a look at some of the answers to our Quora question or to get involved in recycle week visit the Recycle Now website.

Following on from the success of the FRN Conference in January, we have been embarking on a number of road trips recently to demonstrate R3 Online to businesses and charities who are searching for software to aid them with their recycling management.

The organisations that took a particular interest in our furniture recycling software over the course of the event were:

This has taken us all around the UK to a number of very different furniture and white goods recycling organisations over the last three months, with the road trip continuing this week as we head to Loughborough to meet with Sofa Reuse, a charity who work to recycle and reuse furniture and electrical items.

Bryson Electrical Recycling is the biggest white goods reuse company in Northern Ireland. They were so impressed with our initial visit, that in March they travelled across to one of our existing customers, the Sofa Project in Bristol, to attend a workshop and tour of their facilities to see R3-Online in action!

We are delighted to have also now sold the software to Craft, an independent not for profit company based in Wales who not only deal with the reuse of furniture and electrical items, but also toys, clothes and homeware to name but a few. We look forward to implementing the software with them in the coming weeks.

Last week it was announced that Urban Element have been shortlisted in the innovation category for the West Oxfordshire Business Award, based on their development of the R3 Online environmental software package.

The award recognises businesses which have demonstrated an innovative approach to product development, business processes, client relationships or any other notable business innovations.

The winners will be announced at an awards dinner which takes place at Eynsham Hall on Friday 11th March. This event which promises to be a lively and fun celebration of West Oxfordshire's economy will also be a completely carbon neutral event, with OxTreeGen planting trees to offset the carbon usage caused by the event.