Being a sustainability project, Growhampton  is all about everything to do with upcycling. This is a form of recycling whereby a newly made product has increased in its purpose, functionality or value. Growhampton has embraced this philosophy at the University of Roehampton, for example at our growing spaces, our cafe and our market stall.

The raised beds in our main growing site have been constructed from old scaffold boards while our container and planter themed gardens have been made from fruit bins, apple crates and half whisky barrels. The rest of our pots and planters have been acquired from the freecycle website – a brilliant way to offload or acquire all sorts of items for no money, and prevent them from going to landfill. We’ve even obtained quite a few loads of topsoil from freecycle too!

Term has just started at the university so we’ve expanded our weekly farmers' market selling campus-grown fresh produce, to now include a thrift shop. Last year when students left our halls of residence, we collected clothes and household items. Now we’re making them available to current students this term. We’ve only run our thrift shop stall twice and have already almost run out of clothing! Just imagine all these items unnecessarily taking up landfill space!

The Hive Cafe is the home of Growhampton and nowhere is upcycling more prevalent than here. Apart from the amazing structure itself (made from two repurposed shipping containers welded together), we’ve made scaffold board tables apple crate stools, cable reel coffee tables andplastic crate seating. Our beautiful cedar coffee tables are made from off-cuts of dead trees found on our campus.

The Hive Café has been selected by the Soil Association as a finalist in its 2014 Organic Awards under the eating out category. We’re pleased the effort we have gone to in creating an ethical and social menu for our customers  has been recognised and this is reflected in people’s loyalty to our little independent cafe.

Voting for the Soil Association awards closes on 30 September so you have less than seven days to vote for us. Do feel free to drop in and vote at the cafe, or you can vote online at any time by clicking here. Want to know what why it’s so great? The Hive Cafe is open Monday-Friday from 8.30-4pm and on Saturday from 10-2.

Happy Upcycling, Joel
Joel Williams is the Grower for the University of Roehampton Students’ Union’s Growhampton project