Last weekend Fergus Reid and Jon Ellard attended the FRN Conference on behalf of R3-Online to demo its new features and show how it can help furniture reuse projects with their recycling management. Both came back to the office brimming with ideas and were full of great feedback. Some of their highlights included; talks from Richard Featherstone and Caroline Lee-Smith from the London Reuse Network , a discussion with Chris White, MP for Warwick and Leamington on Social Enterprise and Social Value, as well as a “very motivational” presentation from Kelvin Hughes of the Community Furniture Project.
On top of the weekends scheduled events, the pair also got a chance to meet representatives from a variety of furniture reuse organisations including The Mustard Tree from Manchester, Bryson Electrical Recycling from Belfast and Craft in Aberystwyth. Jon is now talking of plans to do an R3-Online road trip to tour the UK’s furniture reuse organisations to gain and even better insight into their needs and how R3-Online can work for them, so watch this space!
As well as meeting new people, the pair have also come back with loads of ideas on how to build on our existing office environmental policy. As part of Urban Element, R3-Online already aims to become a paperless office but where necessary, uses recycled paper and a naturally responsible printing process provided by Seacourt, a local company that produces 0% waste. The furniture in our office is a combination of recycled and new furniture from companies that support the FRN, and we have also changed all the lights in our building from T8’s to T5 energy efficient bulbs. Despite this there is still a lot more both R3-Online and the whole of Urban Element can do to reduce our environmental impact. There are now plans to improve our current recycling process and we are investigating into fitting solar panels on the office roof.
As well as these efforts we are looking for more innovative ways we can make our office greener, if you have any ideas or advice why not contribute to our Quora question or @reply us on Twitter
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