About

CFRC has the following aims;
Divert hundreds of tonnes of bulky household waste from landfill over the next 3 -5 years, attaining a high re-use rate - assisting Ayrshire local authorities to meet their Scottish Government recycling/re-use targets and minimising the region’s environmental footprint.
Offer a free and convenient mechanism through which householders and the general public can donate unwanted furniture and white goods items which have a reuse  value
Assist low income groups and disadvantaged individuals in Ayrshire by providing low cost, second hand goods to furnish their homes and improve their quality of life
Create jobs, training and volunteering opportunities for unemployed Ayrshire residents through our collection, warehousing, processing, retailing and delivery services
Provide efficient and ethical house clearance services for registered social landlords in Ayrshire to improve their business performance and support their corporate social responsibility activities
CFRC is now focused on generating ongoing revenues by:-
establishing retail sales operations to facilitate sales to low income Ayrshire residents and the general public;
establishing house clearance services for Ayrshire’s social housing providers on a contractual basis
agreeing a service level agreement with Ayrshire local authorities with regards to a payment per tonne of waste diverted from landfill
continuing to pursue other grant funding opportunities
Our Environmental Agenda
As part of its Zero Waste Strategy, the Scottish Government identified a need to stimulate the development of re-use infrastructure across Scotland. Zero Waste Scotland was charged with managing the Increase III Fund to provide funding to projects which could meet the following 3 aims:
To help re-use projects recover household items for re-use from civic amenity sites in partnership with local authorities;
To seed-fund re-use projects in geographic areas where there is a significant gap in re-use service provision
To support re-use projects to develop re-use of additional material types.
On the basis of these criteria and a submission which was developed following initial consultation with the 3 Ayrshire local authorities in November 2009, CHA were awarded Increase III monies to kick start Cunninghame Furniture Recycling Company in 2010.
A key element of CFRC’s business model therefore is to secure a supply of re-usable furniture and household goods by providing the general public with a convenient alternative when taking their furniture to Civic Amenity Sites (CAS).
CFRC currently have an agreement in place with East Ayrshire Council as follows:
Location of CAS container at Western Road, Kilmarnock
Waiver for Year 1 on landfill charges (£71 per tonne)
Agreement to pay landfill diversion rewards (£71 per tonne) at end of year subject to an audit.
Promotion of CFRC on their recycling website (still to be completed)
Potential for their call centre for special uplifts to divert donations to CFRC (still to be completed)
Ultimately CFRC would like to locate steel shipping containers in Civic Amenity Sites (CAS) in each Ayrshire local authority area, turning on supply from a new CAS every 6-9 months on average.
CFRC will also access furniture supply from donations collected directly from the general public. This will be a ‘cherry picking’ service, collecting larger items of value that the owners may not be able to take to the CAS sites and may therefore end up being taken to landfill upon uplift by the LA’s special uplift service.
Once again CFRC would like to secure agreement with each of the Waste Strategy Teams in the Ayrshire local authorities for call centre staff who take calls for special uplifts to divert the householder to CFRC in those cases where the unwanted household goods have a residual value.
CFRC will also offer social housing providers an ethical solution to house clearances. Whilst private companies currently undertake these clearances and place the materials lifted in landfill, CFRC staff when undertaking a house clearance will sift the materials to identify goods which can be re-used by others.