In partnership with leading Facilities Management company Sodexho, Waste to Wonder has received the award for Best Waste Prevention (non-food) Project at the 2020 Waste2Zero awards.

February 2020 saw the start of a refurbishment project for one of Sodexo’s blue-chip clients at two central London locations. Tasked by its client to redistribute as much as possible, Sodexo partnered with Waste to Wonder to redistribute over 6,000 pieces of redundant office furniture and equipment through its charitable arm, The Waste to Wonder Trust.

The furniture and equipment weighed around 289,000kg and through the project 99% was diverted from being sent for disposal as waste and redistributed to local and international charities to reuse.

Charities which benefited from the project included:

• Emmaus Greenwich (UK)
• Spark of Hope (Senegal & Uganda),
• FAST (Romania)
• Mokwe Development Association (Cameroon)

Simon Mussett, head of waste management, Sodexo UK & Ireland, said: “We are delighted to win this award with Waste to Wonder, we are incredibly proud of this project and helping our client prevent the unnecessary waste of office equipment and furniture by redistributing it to organisations who can maximise the life of the items and helping organisations who are creating new opportunities for disadvantaged individuals both locally and internationally.

“At Sodexo we are committed to ensuring all our waste solutions are built on the foundations of the waste hierarchy and adopt a circular approach and have set ourselves a target in the UK and Ireland to ensure 70% of the waste we produce and manage on behalf of our clients is reused and recycled.”

This year, Waste to Wonder is embarking on Challenge100 which sees the ethical clearance company aim to distribute 100 School in a Box Shipments in 2021 to charities and schools around the world. This equates to £2.5 million of donated items from partners and customers such as Sodexo.

Michael Amos, Managing Director of Waste to Wonder, said: “We are thrilled to see our partnership with Sodexo recognised in this way. We are extremely proud of what we have achieved on this project and the positive impact the donated items have made to communities in need. We thank Sodexo for their ongoing partnership and look forward to achieving our Challenge100 target this year.”

For more information or to get involved, please visit wastetowonder.com/challenge-100.

View a short film on the winning project:

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