Your donations are helping save lives

We have been in partnership with the British Heart Foundation (BHF) since 2015, to encourage students to donate items they no longer want when they move out of campus accommodation.

These items are sold in BHF shops to raise valuable funds for their research and education work. Staff have also been able to donate items via the big red collection banks on our Colchester Campus (next to Keynes Tower and Walton Court at South Courts) and Southend Campus (University Square).

The BHF campaign contributes to the University’s waste diversion, carbon reduction and social responsibility targets, and supports charitable giving within our community.

In 2019, when Essex students moved out of their accommodation, the equivalent of 13.9 tonnes of items were diverted from the waste stream – that’s around 141 tonnes of carbon emissions (CO2) avoided across the lifecycle, from manufacture and disposal, which is roughly equivalent to 210 cows. The average value of a bag is £14, so in total, around £140,742 was raised.

For every £1 raised, around 72p goes straight to funding research on heart and circulatory diseases, and the risk factors that cause them. Beyond that, they also provide support services for heart patients of all ages, and work with communities to raise awareness and help save lives.

Thirty staff from Estates and Campus Services recently received CPR training from the BHF team, to learn first-hand how valuable the charity's work is – and to help our colleagues be prepared if they ever need to help save a life.

Although the BHF is limiting its collections, our Accommodation teams are still encouraging everyone to donate items they no longer need.