The Mission
Our mission is to provide a network where organisations keep their equipment, assets and "stuff" circulating to reduce spend, waste and supply chain environmental impacts.
The Background
Daniel O'Connor launched Warp It in 2013. Warp It was created out of a need. While working in the waste management sector, Daniel saw too many perfectly good items being thrown away. It is too challenging for busy staff to find a new home for surplus items, quickly and easily.
Warp It started off in 2005 as a freecycle -style email ring. This proved popular, but there were some major drawbacks. Legal obligations were not dealt with sufficiently. The new owner of the item could not be screened and checked. We also found Emails to be clumsy, annoying, time consuming and they cannot be tracked. This meant the whole process was time consuming for the users, which reduced participation and useable resources were also still going into the bin!
In early 2012 we decided to break it all down and ask a few questions. What worked? What didn't work? What features would keep staff coming back to use the service? What do Facebook, eBay and Amazon do? What were the barriers to reuse in organisations and how can we bridge the barriers? How can we make it easier for the 3rd sector to access corporate resources without legal risk?
We continue to introduce customer requested features on an almost monthly basis. We have over 1000 schools, 1000 charities and a large proportion of the University and health sector in the UK using the service. In 2014 we picked up our first overseas customer. Our customers have picked up many awards by applying our system to their own asset and reuse problems.
The Name
Right at the start we couldn't think of a name that didn't sound too boring or cheesy. Alex, the Finance Director, asked "What are the main reasons staff do not redistribute reusable items?". Daniel said "Space and time. Both are in short supply". We then started playing with the words "time-warp" and "space-warp". In frustration Daniel then said "What are the customers going to do with their stuff?" Alex said "They are going to Warp It!" and it stuck!
The Vision
Only 10% of the raw materials used to make a product are found in the final product. So, the chair you are sitting on actually generated a further 90% of waste during manufacture. More alarmingly, the amount of waste generated for a single laptop computer is close to 4000 times the weight. For this reason alone it is important to reuse where possible. But there are also lots of other benefits to reuse.
The Warp It vision is to be a network where buying new is the last resort and nothing is wasted. A network where reusable items are redistributed for their 2nd and 3rd useful lives. When the items fail they are diverted into repair and reintroduced later.
We want to reduce waste and carbon emissions. We want to make it easy for staff to reduce unnecessary purchasing. We want to make it easy for organisations to divert surplus resources to charity and SMEs so they can further their aims.
We want public sector, business and charity to collaborate to reduce resource use, encourage efficiency and sustainability.
Our front page performance indicators and endorsements speak for themselves.