Factual
Every year more than 10 million unbroken pieces of furniture are thrown out of British homes and sent to land fill. In this programme Jonathan Maitland takes on a challenge to furnish a house with used, reclaimed or free furniture on a budget of £500, in one week.
Helen Middleton of the Furniture Re-Use Network says: “For every one tonne of furniture or electrical appliance that is thrown away you’re talking about five to fifteen tonnes of carbon worth attached to that material …And when you’re talking about climate change it’s the carbon, not just the landfill issue that we should be talking about.”
Having previously eaten out of date food every day for two weeks to highlight the amount of food we throw away and cooked a banquet of food that supermarkets had discarded, Jonathan aims to continue his waste campaign with this new project. Since the start of the Tonight campaign the government have announced Britain’s new strategy on becoming a zero waste nation – with an aim to recycle or use for energy 75 per cent of household waste in ten years.
Jonathan meets Laurie and Kelly who live near Brighton and have two adopted children. They’ve volunteered to have their house made over, but admit they hadn’t thought of using reclaimed or second hand furniture in their home before. “It might sound snobby but I just think, ’Where’s it come from?’ You always think the worse don’t you.”
Jonathan teams up with interior designer Oliver Heath, who starts his hunt for the furniture. Meanwhile, he meets Leila McKellar who has furnished her whole flat from websites such as Freegle and Freecycle. Showing Jonathan around, she explains: “The things I didn’t get for free, I mean off Freegle, I got out of skips… I think if you have time and a bit of imagination you can actually make somewhere look very expensive when it wasn’t at all.”
Laurie, Kelly and their children go off to stay with family for a week while the team get started on the makeover with a little help from design students from Sussex University. Jonathan visits Shabitat, a furniture re-use organisation that picks up used and abandoned furniture, and gives them a list of items from Oliver that they aim to try to find in skips. Meanwhile, Oliver paints the house using paint from a community reclaim scheme and begins to furnish it with furniture from reclaim yards or from Freecycle.
A week later Jonathan brings Laurie and Kelly back to look at their newly refurnished home and braces himself for their verdict.
Last edited: Friday, 13 November 2009
