Chris Johnston, a sustainable development student at the University of St Andrew’s in Scotland, was — as many university students often are — supporting himself with part-time work in a local hotel. Whether carrying luggage, parking a car or giving recommendations on the concierge team, or clearing tables and serving food in one of the hotel restaurants, Chris periodically found himself with spare time to walk the hotel grounds and make sustainability recommendations to his colleagues in management.
In the hotel basement, Chris came across a closet filled with guest room mini-fridges. Dented and scratched, they simply would not do for this upscale hotel — one that prides itself on a reputation for perfection. Speaking with the facilities manager, Chris learned that the closet was an interim step while the manager tried to figure out how to keep these out of a landfill. They contained freon — never a good thing to toss in a landfill — and after all, they were perfectly functional. Any suggestions?
Chris took two weeks and repurposed every last one of the mini-fridges. To local schools, for use in science labs, and to local hospitals, for use in patient rooms.
Benefits achieved:
The hotel received letters of thanks for their gifts and their example as a great corporate citizen.
The facilities manager regained use of his closet — always nice to have extra storage space!
None of the mini-fridges were sent to a landfill.
The school and the hospital put the mini-fridges to good use, enhancing the services that they offer while using their precious financial resources on program activities rather than the purchase of equipment.
To the extent that either the school or hospital would have had to purchase mini-fridges, they no longer had to — thereby preserving our natural resources.
At Chris’s next visit home, he approached his dad and said, “we need to do this. We need to make it easy for businesses to do the right thing with perfectly good items that are otherwise destined for landfills.” Upcycle4Good was born!