The Brief:

The City of Edinburgh Council were seeking a sustainable approach to the decommission phase at Castlebrae High School prior to the demolition of the building in late 2022. The client had no desire to utilise the redundant furniture internally but were keen to keep resources in circulation wherever possible via external reuse strategies. All staff and students were transitioning to the new school campus on return from mid term and taking nothing with them.

The Outcome:

BGES were given a 3 week timeframe to fully decommission the campus. 2600+ individual items of furniture and equipment were removed from this 2 storey site and were readied for redistribution. Senseless vandalism and destruction of resources after the closure of the school forced a higher recycling statistic than our team would have liked on this project yet BGES still managed to redistribute the majority of resources from the campus.

CSR & Sustainability

During asset decommission works, BGES adhere to circular strategies for resource reuse created and managed by sustainability partners - Recreate Scotland. The City of Edinburgh Council is a Recreate Certified organisation having made the commitment to reduce their carbon footprint during periods of resource decommission.

Zero skips were utilised during the FF+E decommission program and an impressive reuse rate of 89% was achieved for all redundant FF+E. Read more about their sustainability credentials here.