Manchester Partnership helps students leave £1.3 million parting gift

18 Dec 2017

Students across Manchester help fund life-saving research through donating unwanted items

Students have raised as much as £1.3 million in donations of unwanted items to the British Heart Foundation in the last six years, through the Manchester Partnership.

When students leave Manchester for the summer, or when they have finished studying, the Partnership works together to create one single campaign named ‘Give It Don’t Bin It’. This aims to encourage students to donate unwanted items such as clothes, shoes, books, handbags, furniture, working electrical items, crockery, pots, pans and unwanted unopened food items for charity.

The key aim is to make reuse as easy as putting items into a general waste or recycling bin, to show students how easy it is to donate items to charity. In 2017 donations received as part of the campaign could have raised as much as £318,000.

The Partnership Group consists of The University of Manchester, Manchester City Council, Manchester Student Homes and Manchester Metropolitan University. It represents the equivalent of almost 80,000 students who live in central and south Manchester.

The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University worked with Manchester Central Food Bank to donate unopened, non-perishable food left by students in halls of residence. This donated over 4,000 meals to people in Manchester living in food poverty this year.

For the six years of the campaign, there have been over 500 students who have volunteered to support the campaign, ranging from developing the campaign packs to distributing the donation bags across South Manchester.

The partnership has also won a CIWM (Chartered Institute for Waste Management) award in the Best Reuse and Waste Prevention category for 2017 and representatives from the campaign were recently invited to the House of Lords for recognition of the success of the campaign.

Simon Gillespie (Chief Executive for the British Heart Foundation) said: “Thank you and congratulations on this remarkable achievement by the Manchester Partnership. The generous donations and amazing volunteering have supported vital life-saving research, including 58 projects across the city, into devastating and often life-threatening heart and circulatory diseases that affect 7 million people in the UK and hundreds of millions globally.”

Professor James Thompson (Vice-President for Social Responsibility at The University of Manchester) said: “I am very proud of the work that the Manchester Partnership has delivered through the ‘Give It Don’t Bin It’ campaign. It shows that by working together with our partners across the city we can make a huge impact to help the lives of people across Manchester.”

Manchester City Council's Executive Member for Neighbourhoods, Councillor Nigel Murphy, said: "The Give It, Don't Bin It campaign ensures that every year, thousands of items are reused and recycled, instead of being needlessly thrown away. Thanks to the efforts of the partners involved and the enthusiastic support of volunteers, more and more students are showing pride in the area they live in and helping us to make south Manchester a cleaner, brighter place - while also raising significant amounts of money for the British Heart Foundation."