UCL furniture and equipment ‘Reyooz-ed’ by London charities
13 November 2019
£250,000 of materials has been diverted from waste by UCL and reused by other organisations in the past two years.

As part of the ongoing transformation of the UCL estate, large quantities of older furniture and equipment have been made surplus to requirements. It has left the university with large amounts of quality furniture and an array of other equipment that needed a new home.
To provide new homes for this surplus, UCL has been working with Reyooz, an online platform that other organisations can use to claim equipment UCL no longer needs.
UCL Estates has worked with Reyooz across seven different sites and found homes for over 75,000kg of goods, including a suite of dental chairs and x-ray machines, medical equipment, books, several hundred exam desks, building materials and standard office furniture. “It has saved over 132,000kg of embodied carbon and helped us maintain our policy of not sending any waste to landfill,” said Ben Stubbs, UCL Senior Sustainability Manager.
A variety of small- to medium-sized charities and enterprises have benefitted from reusing UCL’s goods, including the Young Barnet Foundation, 1Love Community Shop, and the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre. “The benefit for organisations working at a smaller scale is another positive of diverting goods from landfill,” explained Gary Stratmann, Waste Manager at UCL, who visited sites where items were delivered. “Seeing our surplus furniture used in a library for patients suffering from dementia at The Anchor Trust was really powerful,” he added. “UCL cares about what we do with excess resources and how we do it – Reyooz helps us deliver on that.”
UCL also takes part in a redistribution service for furniture and equipment called WarpIt which lets people within UCL advertise and claim equipment they do.Ben outlined the link between using these platforms and meeting UCL’s sustainability goals “We’re aiming to ‘close the loop’ on how we deal with materials and equipment: putting reuse first helps to keep materials at their highest value. This is better than recycling and helps towards our commitment to a ‘circular economy’.”
If you have furniture, equipment or other items you think could be reused, please create a personal profile on WarpIt to loan your items internally, or on Reyooz to find a new owner.