McBains partners with CleanConscience

Through a partnership with CleanConscience, a charity specialising in reclamation and redistribution, McBains has been successful in overseeing a project where redundant or surplus assets valued at over £750,000, from two recent hotel refurbishment projects, were donated for redistribution in order to prevent landfill or incineration.

The items, which included mattresses, bedding, mini bars, bed frames, chairs, tables, lamps, toilets, sinks, shower screens and other bathroom fittings, were reclaimed from The Cambridge Hotel (formerly the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel in Cambridge) and the Macdonald Randolph Hotel in Oxford, as they undergo a luxury refurbishment and transition to the Graduate Hotel brand.

Four local charities benefitted, including organisations serving those disadvantaged in their communities and the formerly homeless. Once local charity saturation was reached, it was decided to support six Lithuanian charities local to the birthplace of CleanConscience project manager, Viktorija; with an orphanage, children’s centre and family crisis centre among those that benefited overseas.

It is estimated that a total of 348 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (CO2e) has been saved from entering the atmosphere and an estimated 78 tonnes of waste has avoided going to landfill or being incinerated through these two reclamation initiatives.

McBains is providing project management to both hotel projects on behalf of Chicago-based real estate company AJ Capital Partners who acquired the properties for their Graduate Hotels brand; a new, boutique hotel collection focused on university towns.

Established in 2015, CleanConscience was originally set up to combat the impact of waste toiletries from the UK hospitality industry. The charity set out to recover, re-purpose and redistribute part-used soaps and toiletries, not only for the benefit of those most in need of hygiene, but to keep single-use plastic out of landfill and the oceans. The overwhelming success of their toiletry reclamation operation led them to set their sights on the huge amount of waste typically generated by redevelopment projects.

Their goal being to salvage, reclaim and redistribute any end-of-life or redundant contents from hotels, restaurants and offices, prior to demolition or redevelopment works. CleanConscience always focus their redistribution activities on the local communities and charities first and, once saturation has been reached, then look further afield to benefit projects in other communities, or even other countries. Redistribution could be to benefit individuals in need, charities serving the disadvantaged in their communities, or indeed to provide stock for those charities that rely on their charity shops for funding.

CleanConscience supports 33 UK charities, one charity in Sierra Leone and six charities in Lithuania.