“The event industry can be wasteful, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Surplus kit donation turns equipment that would otherwise reach landfill into a resource waiting for its next owner. Rehoming it well doesn’t just cut waste, it can change someone’s life” says Marion Rivaux, QHSE & Sustainability Manager.
Every business generates surplus such as old equipment, spare merchandise, and kit that no longer has a home. What separates a company that talks about sustainability from one that practises it is what happens to that surplus next.
At Identity, we don’t see waste as an inevitability. We see it as an opportunity to give something a second purpose, and to give someone a better starting point.
Surplus kit donation in practice: monitors, not landfill
In July, we donated 28 monitors and their desk arms to Screen Share, a charity we’ve partnered with before. Screen Share connects refugees across the UK with the digital devices and skills they need to build their own future. Not food, not shelter, but a tool for connection, for learning, and for getting back on your feet on your own terms.
When Identity and Smyle joined offices, these monitors no longer had a home with us. Rather than let them go to waste, we extended their useful life with Screen Share, keeping them in circulation instead of in landfill.
It’s a small example of circular economy principles in action: fewer resources wasted, and more people given the tools to shape their own path forward.
Water bottles, and an industry-wide opportunity
Summer heat brings no relief when you’re sleeping rough. No shelter, and no easy access to water.
Turning Tides has spent over three decades tackling this in West Sussex and is now the county’s largest homelessness charity. The team works every day to get people off the streets, through short-term support like food and showers, and longer-term pathways towards independent living and a more stable future.
One of the things they need most right now is simple: reusable water bottles. Most of us have a surplus at home. Our industry has even more, with branded merchandise sitting in cupboards and storerooms across every office.
We therefore gathered ours. Every spare bottle in the building, plus a few from home, added up to 21 donated to Turning Tides.
It’s not a huge number. But if every company in our industry did the same, it would be.
What surplus kit donation asks of an industry
Neither donation required a strategy deck or a budget line. They required someone to look at what was already sitting in a cupboard and ask a better question: who could use this instead?
That’s the shift we want to see more of, in our own industry and beyond. Surplus kit and unused merchandise are not the by-products of doing business, they’re a resource. When they’re redirected instead of discarded, they extend the life of what’s already been made, and they hand real, practical tools to people working to build their own future.
We’ve done this twice this year. Surplus kit donation should be standard practice everywhere, not a story worth writing about. The kit is already there; it just needs a home.
