A team of current and former students from the University of the Arts London have collaborated to create mobile storage units, allowing classmates to deposit and collect materials as part of a "circular economy of sharing".
The Re-Use units, which are being rolled out across UAL's London College of Fashion, Chelsea College of Arts and London College of Communication, provide a dedicated space where students can drop off unwanted scraps from their projects so that others can reuse them at no extra cost.
Re-Use units are mobile donation boxes for excess materials
Currently, around 1,000 tonnes of material go to waste at the university every year, which amounts to nearly 40 bin lorries and 23 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
The hope is that the reuse scheme will allow UAL to cut down on this footprint while creating an affordable, accessible material bank for students ? especially in the face of the current cost-of-living crisis. They were purpose-built to store different materials
"By providing our students with the tools to share unwanted or excess materials with each other, we are helping students to source materials at no cost whilst also reducing our carbon emissions," UAL's head of sustainability Ian Lane told Dezeen.
"I believe that our new Re-Use units will help to build a circular economy of sharing amongst our community, thus changing the way that we work together as an institution."
Each unit is made from medium-density fibreboard...