Founding member Spruce Carpets was named Reuse member of the year at the recent Carpet Recycling UK annual conference in June. Pictured here is John O’Hagen, General Manager at Spruce, collecting the award from Carpet America Recovery Effort’s Executive Director Bob Peoples.
Thanks also to John who presented and represented Spruce on the second day of the conference, demonstrating the value provided to the community through the provision of employment and affordable flooring.
About Spruce Carpets
“Spruce is a registered charity based in Glasgow and operating across Scotland and has been repurposing carpet tiles since 2005! Every day the small team at Spruce work collectively, with a wide range of local authority, housing and charitable organisations, ensure that reuse flooring reaches those who need it. We are Scotland’s only social enterprise working in flooring reuse and are fully committed to helping our commercial flooring donors in their journey to net zero” says Austin Hardie, CEO.
Spruce has a close relationship with its local community, providing good quality flooring to low and no income households. In 2021 they worked with over 1,800 households to provide flooring support, either through our work with local authorities, or directly via a social agency referral. They extended their warehouse space especially to cope with the processing of COP26 flooring. In addition, in 2021 they provided 35 young people with work experience in the reuse sector.
Austin says “Spruce works tirelessly to ensure that we are able to support low/no income individuals and families across the greater Glasgow area to access low/no cost reuse flooring – helping turn their houses into warm and comfortable homes.
By working collaboratively with commercial wholesalers and suppliers we are able to route high quality donated flooring away from landfill and toward households who are struggling financially to access the basics necessities for their homes – of which flooring forms as a large and expensive part.
Our commercial donors allow us to ensure that anyone in need can contact us directly or via a social support organisation for assistance with their flooring needs. This service is particularly important for vulnerable individuals and families moving from homelessness into a new property. There is currently no statutory requirement to support the provision of flooring in local authority, RSL or the private rented sector, consequently many households are unable to access this basic necessity. In 2021 we worked with over 1,800 households to provide flooring support, either through our work with local authorities, or directly via a social agency referral”
Volunteering and Employability Support
During 2021 Spruce provided 35 young people with work experience in the reuse sector via the Kickstart programme. This programme allowed Spruce to involve young people in the collection, warehousing, processing and fitting of reuse flooring directly to low/no income households. The young people involved spend 25hrs per week with Spruce or one of their community partners working directly in processing reuse materials and getting them ready for utilisation.
Over the 9-months to December 21 38% of the young people involved had moved on to permanent employment with employers in the local area.
COP26
In November 2021 Spruce worked as a key part of a multi-organisational effort to ensure that as much carpet as possible was reused from the COP26 conference held in Glasgow. Spruce was contacted by the carpet supplier MJ’s Event Services to determine whether Spruce could become involved in the mission save as much carpet and socially repurpose this within the community. The opportunity provided Spruce with the largest single carpet donation in its 17-year history – some 15,000m2.
Working with the main contractor/subcontractors and the COP26 nominated reuse organisation Event Recycle, Spruce worked collaboratively to ensure that at the conclusion of the event we were on-site over three days to ensure the lifting of material was carried out in the least destructive way possible. Materials were then delivered to our Glasgow Warehouse via two articulated lorries over the weekend. All the Spruce team and a number of volunteers came together to unload the material into the warehouse.
“Since November we have been processing the COP26 material specifically in order to ensure that this good quality carpet is available to households across Glasgow and Lanarkshire. We estimate we will be able to help at least 500-700 households through the redeployment of this material” says John.