Support the British Heart Foundation

Moving On

The Moving On project (formerly the Student Re-use Project) redirects unwanted items that have been donated by University students leaving Halls accommodation to charity. The average student generates between 10-20kg of reusable items a year, including stationery, kitchen appliances, books, clothes and bedding. Often many items are thrown away at the end of term, though many are in very good condition. The project runs from May - September and offers volunteering opportunities to both students and staff throughout this period.

In the Spring of 2023 we will be embarking on our tenth year of partnership with the British Heart Foundation, which will give students the convenience of donation points within halls of residence, as well as collection banks on campus. The scheme will enable students to directly support the charity to continue its leading work in fighting coronary heart disease by donating their unwanted items into designated bins and charity bags. The charity will use these donations to sell in their charity shops, to raise vital funds for the cause. 

Where to donate

You can deposit your donation in one of the red British Heart Foundation external donation points.  These can be found at

  • Lafrowda
  • Birks Grange
  • Rowancroft
  • St David's Brunel Close
  • East Park

You can also leave your donations at the following internal collection points:

  • James Owen Court Laundry
  • Birks Grange Central Block Reception
  • Lopes Hall Foyer
  • Holland Hall Laundry
  • St David’s Laundry
  • Duryard Creedy House
  • Clydesdale House Laundry

Please place your unwanted items into the bag provided or any other clean bag. To ensure items are not damaged or get dirty, please tie each bag so that the contents do not fall out.

What to donate

The British Heart Foundation welcomes your donations of clothing, shoes, bags, accessories, books, computer games, CDs, DVDs, electrical items, crockery, cookware and homeware.

Please do not donate pillows, duvets, sharp knives pr dirty / damaged items as these will not be accepted.

Students are able to also donate unwanted sealed food to the Exeter Foodbank. The Foodbank will welcome any donations that are in date and non-perishable and please see a list of priority items.

 

 

Previous years

2021/22:  2212 bags were collected that went on to raise £30,968. From private student accommodation there were 1120 bags, and these realised a value of £15,680. That’s an amazing total value raised of £46,648 from our donations. It all weighed in at over 26 tonnes, so that’s a substantial volume of waste diversion too, had it been disposed of instead. Also thanks to the CARE team, 250 of last year’s duvets and 500 pillows went to orphanages in the Ukraine due to a new partnership between the University and  OHOB  a humanitarian charity based in the South West. Another 70 duvets and 140 pillows were collected by Turntable – who will distribute them among various charities and organisations within Exeter. 

2016: This was our most successful year of partnership with the Moving On scheme yet. Over the course of the year, more than 3000 bags of unwanted items were donated by staff and students at the University to the scheme, with another 330 bags being donated from the Falmouth campus. The value of the donations made by this University to the British Heart Foundation in 2016 equated to £44,268. The success of the scheme is growing each year and bodes well for its fourth year of partnership with the University in 2017. 

2015: Our second year of partnership with the British Heart Foundation's Moving On scheme was even more successful than our first. Students and staff managed to donate 2,950 bags from our Exeter campuses to the scheme in 2015, nearly 500 more than in 2014. In addition, 336 bags were donated on the Penryn campus, bringing the total number of bags donated to over 3,250. This is the equivalent of a donation of over £41,300 from the University to the British Heart Foundation. If these unwanted items were sent to landfill instead of having been donated, they would have produced over 240,000kg of carbon emissions. 

The University also supports local foodbanks as part of the scheme and 2015 saw donations of 25 crates of food to help feed people in Exeter. 

2014: Our first year of participation with the Moving On scheme was highly successful. With the added convenience of 8 donation points in Halls of residence on campus, students donated over 2,400 bags of re-usable items, weighing a total of almost 20 tonnes. This huge amount was estimated to be worth over £37,000 to the charity, and avoids the emission of almost 200,000 tonnes CO2 equivalent compared with sending the items to landfill. The one day Free Stuff Event during Freshers week took on a different format in 2014, as a Charity Pop-Up Event. This saw charities such as Hospiscare, Save the Children, and Scope coming to campus to sell items to students, providing a low-cost way to furnish homes, as well as raising vital funds for the charities on the day. 

2013: The Free Stuff Event provided a new student home for an estimated 2.2 tonnes of perfectly reusable items. The event was scheduled for two hours, but with queues reaching from Peter Chalk Centre to The Forum, the vast majority of items were taken by keen students in less than 20 minutes. Throughout 2012-13, the project diverted an estimated total of 6.34 tonnes of items from landfill. Hospiscare received an estimated revenue of £4,300.00 through the partnership, while the Exeter Foodbank benefitted from over 110kg of donated food, bringing the all-time total to 357.6kg through the life of the partnership.

View pictures from the event in the Free Stuff 2013 Flickr gallery. 

2012: The Re-use Project has reused a total of 4.8 tonnes of items via donations to new partner Hospiscare and the annual Free Stuff Event.

2011: The project was managed by James Matthews, an MSc in Sustainable Development student as part of an internship offered by Campus Services.