Meet the Scheme: Community RePaint Rochdale

Please provide a short summary of what you do at RBH why the organisation became a Community RePaint scheme?
Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) is a tenant and employee co-owned mutual housing society, and we have been a part of Community RePaint since 2014 and opened our paint shop to the public in 2017. I have worked for RBH for over 2 years now, as our reuse project coordinator looking after our paint and furniture reuse services.

Redistributing leftover paint via Community RePaint Rochdale enables us to support our local communities with accessing paint at an affordable cost. It also enables us to help reduce waste, and together with our furniture reuse service and food pantries we prevented 112 tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere last year.

Can you tell us what your typical working day is like at Community RePaint Rochdale and possibly share your top tip for managing the paint shop?
For us, a typical day starts with restocking the shelves in the main shop from our backstock. We do this every morning before the shop opens as there are always gaps on our shelves from the previous day. We take this time in the morning to also process stock to ensure it is suitable for reuse and apply our colour swatches. The shop opens at 10am until 1pm, then 2pm-4pm. During this period, the shop is always busy with customers. As a small shop we can provide each customer with guidance on which paints are suitable for their needs, making sure they get exactly the right paint and quantity for their project.

Our top tip is to ensure that customers can easily find what they are looking for, we have achieved this by adding clearly marked areas in the shop, we also have signage that explains the properties and uses for different types of paint.

What have been your scheme’s biggest achievements thus far?
We are always striving to improve and expand. We have increased awareness of our services by using social media and pop-up events. As a result, our customer base is growing all the time. We proudly provide work experience placements for our local college students, and we have volunteering opportunities for the public.

Since opening in 2014, we have prevented over 58,000 litres of paint from going to waste and redistributed over 46,000 to the local community!

Watch our Community RePaint Rochdale tour video below:

@communityrepaint Head to our website to find your nearest Community RePaint scheme! communityrepaint.org.uk #diy #budgetdiy #budgethome #fyp #homerenovation #communityrepaint ♬ ALMOST HOME – Mad Adix, Marc Steinmeier

Do you have any specific stories from the community you’d like to share?
We provide regular support to various local community groups and charities, allowing them to access paint affordably to brighten up community spaces. Recently we have supported lots of different projects by providing paint that would otherwise been unaffordable. The projects we have supported recently include a dementia garden for Springhill Hospice, buddy and first aid benches in a local school playground, a mural at a local youth centre and a community garden.

Here are some photos from projects using paint from Community RePaint Rochdale:

Do you have any painting tips that you can share with us?
If you have paint left in a tin that you want to keep for future use, ensure that you remove any access paint from around the rim and lid so that it can be fully closed. If air can get to the paint, it will spoil it. You can also add a layer of cling film under the lid to prevent drying out. Store tins away from direct sunlight and in a frost-free environment. If there is only a small amount left in the tin, consider transferring into something smaller, such as a jam jar. And of course, any surplus that you are not going to use, donate this to your local Community RePaint drop-off point.

What’s next for Community RePaint Rochdale?
We are working towards building new relationships with local retailers and recycling centres to ensure we can save even more paint from landfill. We are also constantly reviewing our processing and storage of stock to make sure that we can maintain a varied supply of paint types for our customers.

We’re also excited to continue to work and grow with the Community RePaint Network team. Over the past year, Network Coordinator Dan Everard from Resource Futures, who manages the network, has visited our scheme to provide support and guidance. This has resulting in us now having our back stock completely organised and easy to maintain going forward. Thanks to Dan and the rest of the central network team for their support.

 

You can contact Community RePaint Rochdale by emailing paintshop@rbh.org.uk, or calling 07816 078 357.

They can be found at 271 Olney in Freehold, Rochdale, Greater Manchester, OL11 4LQ and are open Monday – Friday: 10am – 1pm / 2pm – 4pm.

For more information about Community RePaint Rochdale, click here to view their scheme page.