Free Christmas comms, partnering with social housing providers
Merry Christmas from Freegle Councils
and farewell 2020
As 2020 draws to a close, we breathe a collective sign of relief and hopefully get to take some time off to recover from a difficult year. For some, this year has been more challenging than ever and so we at Freegle continue to strive not just to reduce waste, but to also reduce poverty; more on that below.
We certainly won't forget what we did (and what we didn't do) in 2020. But there have been some positives, there does seem to have been a small, but very welcomed shift in attitudes towards waste. Initially we were all very aware of how much food we were wasting and then with shops and charity shops closed, more people started to embrace reuse and the opportunity to buy, give and get secondhand items. In fact, we have seen twice the amount of activity on Freegle at its peak this year.
From everyone at Freegle, have a very merry Christmas
and a happy New Year!
If you know anyone else who might like to read this newsletter, or you'd like to view this in your browser, please use this link.
We ❤ stats!
Here are some of our favourite Freegle stats from 2020...
Members 3.2 million
Offers 531,142
Wanteds 176,150
Successes (that we know of, will be underestimate) 359,152
Tonnes of CO2 saved 3,900
Social & economic benefit £4 million
Chat messages exchanged 4,082,873 (Freeglers like to talk!)
Posts mentioning Christmas 10,492
Posts mentioning pear trees 20
Posts mentioning partridges 17
Partnering to end Furniture Poverty
"Furniture Poverty is the inability to access the basic furniture and appliances that provide a household with a decent quality of life and allow it to participate in the norms of society"
Our latest project at Freegle is to work with social housing providers to help people get access to essential items for free.
According to the charity End Furniture Poverty, the list of items deemed to be essential is as follows:
• Bed, bedding and mattress • Table and chairs • Sofa and/or easy chairs • Wardrobe/drawers • Carpets in living rooms and bedrooms • Curtains or blinds • Washing machine • Refrigerator and freezer • Cooker/oven • TV
WRAP estimates that 36% of items taken to HWRCs are actually reusable by householders, with almost half of this being furniture. Each year approximately 34% of the total tonnage of items that go through Freegle is furniture, that's around 2,000 tonnes.
Councils are connected to so many people. By working with more councils, we can help get more essential items to more people in need.
We are keen to speak to any local authorities that would potentially be interested in working with us and to find out what is already happening across the UK. If your council waste team works with your council's social housing team to redistribute bulky waste for example, please get in touch, we'd love to hear from you -councils@ilovefreegle.org
Image credit: www.endfurniturepoverty.org
Don't let your waste expand this Christmas!
If you are after some last minute or New Year clearout comms, we have a range of FREE ready-made templates available for you to push out through your social media and website channels as well as logos, images and artwork. You can download all the materials here.
If you would like to co-brand any of our materials with your authority logo, please feel free!
Freegle is a brilliant way of passing on unwanted stuff locally and giving it a new lease of life. It’s also a great way of helping families that might be struggling to afford everything at this time of year.
Freegle can be used for:
Pre and post-Christmas decluttering
Christmas trees – giving away unwanted ones or getting a new one
Decorations
Toys and other presents (you’ll be amazed what people are giving away)
An extra seat for the dining room table!
And even regifting unwanted presents (yes, it’s really ok to do that!)
You can track how any campaigns you run have made an impact in your authority area by checking our live stats pages.
Keep at it!
There are always lots of things that councils can do to help keep encouraging residents to value reuse such as...
Adding Freegle and other reuse options to your A-Z pages - see Eden District Councilfor an example;
Making reuse a priority - Westminster City Councilhave done this brilliantly on their bulky waste page;
Partner with us to run a reuse campaign, well got all the free data, comms and support you could wish for on our Communications Toolkit for Councils.
Feel free to get in touch with us at any time. As well as our brilliant local volunteers (there are hundreds of them!) we also have Natalie Ibbott looking after our councils, waste and social housing projects, the reuse legend Cat Fletcher running our media and tech-wizard/Chair of our Board, Edward Hibbert who keeps our website and techy stuff running smoothly. We are always happy to talk about reuse, whether you have a plan or just want to find out more about what we do -councils@ilovefreegle
If any colleagues from your own or councils would be interested in receiving our newsletter or discussing how they can work with Freegle, please email their details (with their consent) to councils@ilovefreegle.org
