What 60 tonnes of rescued materials looks like

Around 60 tonnes a year. We say it often, and we’ve noticed people nod without really seeing it. So let’s picture it.

By weight

A London double-decker bus weighs roughly twelve tonnes empty. Sixty tonnes is about five of them. If you prefer animals, it’s roughly ten adult elephants. Every year, that much material comes through the doors of a store on the Hazelhurst Estate, is sorted by volunteers, and leaves again in members’ bags.

(A note on the number: it’s an estimate, and we’re documenting how we measure it so we can publish it with more confidence. We’d rather say “around” and mean it than claim a precision we don’t have.)

By what it was going to be

Most of it was heading for landfill: surplus from print runs, offcuts from workshops, packaging that never got used, end-of-line stock, the leftovers of a city that makes and sells at enormous scale. None of it was rubbish in any meaningful sense. It was simply in the wrong place.

By what it becomes

This is the part we like. Sixty tonnes becomes school displays and costume departments, nursery collage tables and art-school degree shows, community theatre sets and the contents of a hundred family kitchen tables on a rainy Sunday. One member described her visits as “like Christmas every time”. Multiply that across a year of the days we’re open and you have a fair picture of where the tonnage goes.

By what it saves

For a school whose materials budget has been cut, rescued materials are the difference between doing the project and not. For a home-educating family, they’re the difference between one child’s creative education and none. For a student, they’re a degree show that doesn’t cost a month’s rent. Our members pay a small annual fee, and most of what you see is free to members, with a small charge for a few items. That’s the maths that matters most to us.

Help the number grow

If you’d like more materials rescued next year, there are three ways to help: donate surplus if you’re a business, give a few hours if you’d like to volunteer, or simply join and put the materials to use. Every bag that leaves the store is part of the tonnage.