CUSTOMER STORIES: Free recycling saves crucial costs for wildlife charity

“Having a free recycling service is invaluable to us,”. “It’s nice to work with a company that is keen to support a small charity and we will definitely work with Stone again in a couple of years when we are ready to recycle again.”
Elizabeth Woodward - Support Services Officer

Background

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust describes itself as a small charity with big ideas.  Based near Matlock on the edge of the Peak District, a team of over fifty staff work across six landscapes and manage over 170 projects for people, wildlife and wild spaces.  In addition, they manage shops to raise money for their work, as well as education centers where, for example, they may take toddlers on a mini beast hunt.

The charity also offers a range of professional services such as land management and planning, and they even have their own summer festival for the local community. So there’s always a lot going on to keep everyone busy.

Key Information

• Trust needs to save every penny it can to achieve its core mission.
• Other recycling services were too costly for the charity.
• Stone were able to offer free collection and a hassle-free service.
• With Stone, the Trust were confident its end-of-life tech was disposed of securely and sustainably.
• Stone provided the Trust with complete traceability of the entire process.

Situation

As a charity, the Wildlife Trust needs to save every penny it can. Elizabeth Woodward, the Trusts Support Services Officer, said any service the trust can get free of charge releases funds for it to use to achieve its core mission.

“We don’t have a great deal of equipment to recycle,” she said, “however, what we did have used to be taken away for free.  More recently, many recycling companies started to add a price element and recycling suddenly became quite expensive, which made it problematic for us when we need to be accountable to our membership for every penny we spend.”

Solution

Elizabeth came across Stone recycling via a simple Google search, and she was confident she had found the right partner for the Trust straightaway. Stone provide hassle-free, secure and completely traceable IT recycling to organisations of all sizes from all sectors across the UK. “When I called Stone, our contact Jamie was immediately responsive and helpful,” Elizabeth explained, “and he was not concerned that we were only a small business.” Furthermore, unlike other recycling providers, Stone were able to offer free collections.

The charity try to make their IT equipment last for as long as possible.  “We really get the most out of our kit – at least six years if we can,” said Elizabeth.  “Jamie explained we needed to have 25 pieces of recyclable equipment for Stone and in just a few weeks after our initial call we had it.

“Stone gave us a time and date for collection and they were bang on time and were careful not to disrupt our day-to-day work as they removed the equipment.  They were really polite and fast – it was a smooth process to collect our computers, switches, gadgets and tablets.”

Sustainability is a core value of both Stone and the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, so ensuring green operations and contributing to a better environment is fundamental for both.  By using Stone’s recycling services, the Trust can be confident its end-of-life tech was disposed of responsibly and sustainably.

Stone also provided the Trust with complete traceability of the entire process, with full audits and reporting for all assets disposed of, including a Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment recycling certificate (WEEE) to ensure compliance with its own and national standards. This mean the trust were able to account for each piece of equipment it sent for recycling.

The Trust team wanted to ensure the data from their devices had been wiped. Stone use industry-leading data-wiping software from Blancco to ensure effective and secure data-erasure of every piece of equipment it recovers. Blancco is not only GDPR compliant – it additionally shares the same security standards as the Ministry of Defense – so Elizabeth had even further confidence in using Stone.

“Having a free recycling service is invaluable to us,” Elizabeth explained, “It’s nice to work with a company that is keen to support a small charity and we will definitely work with Stone again in a couple of years when we are ready to recycle again.”