Waste Prevention Community Grant Fund
As part of the 2025 to 2026 application process, 10 projects were successfully awarded funding to launch their initiative. The projects are as follows:
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Organisation: Barnham and Eastergate Community Trust
Project description: Engaging the Barnham and Eastergate communities through cookery and food education sessions, clothing swaps, textile classes (for example, making reusable bags), toy swaps, and furniture exchange and repair advice. Sessions will be held regularly in both community halls.
Area: Arun
Results: Diverted 4,362kg of materials, including textiles, food and furniture and engaged with 6,869 residents.
Legacy: The group has seen a growing number of volunteers and has helped develop a culture of reuse within the community.
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Organisation: Bognor Makerspace Repair Café
Project description: A monthly café encouraging residents to repair, not replace, broken household items. Expert volunteers will offer advice or carry out repairs on textiles, clocks, furniture, woodwork, sharpening tools and electrical appliances.
Area: Arun
Results: Diverted 563kg of household items such as clocks, garden tools, small electricals and clothing and engaged with 286 residents.
Legacy: The cafe has helped raise awareness of the importance of regular maintenance, encouraging participants to take a more proactive approach to caring for their possessions and extending their lifespan.
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Organisation: Chichester Bike Project
Project description: Supporting people facing homelessness, refugee displacement, or mental health challenges by teaching bike maintenance and providing refurbished bikes. This reduces waste and improves mobility, independence and confidence. Delivered in partnership with Hart, The Sanctuary and the Chichester Centre.
Area: Chichester
Results: Diverted 9,411kg of second-hand bicycles and clothes and engaged with 51 residents.
Legacy: The project will continue, thanks to the financial support gained by selling on bikes that have been refurbished by the volunteers. This will allow for more residents to develop their own new skills in the future through further workshops and community events.
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Organisation: Selsey Community Forum
Project description: A community composting project using a Ridan machine to process kitchen waste. Compost will enrich The Hidden Garden’s fruit and vegetable beds. 100 kitchen caddies will be distributed to households and residents will drop contents off at the gardens, providing a local food waste solution that supports social welfare projects.
Area: Chichester
Results: Diverted 1,666kg of food, paper and wood shavings and engaged with 100 residents.
Legacy: Local residents continue to use Compost Selsey, as they can see the benefits that compost production brings to the community garden.
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Organisation: Estcots Parents & Friends Association
Project description: Reducing textile waste by collecting and reselling pre-loved school uniforms and upcycling unwearable items. This supports families during the cost-of-living crisis while promoting sustainability.
Area: Mid Sussex
Results: Diverted 228kg of clothing and cuddly toys and engaged with 1,257 residents.
Legacy: The Hub has become an established and valued part of the school community, with ongoing demand for affordable pre-loved uniform, with continued support from families and volunteers. The grant funded storage facility provides the infrastructure needed to operate the scheme sustainably, enabling year-round donations, regular sales and future weekly opening sessions.
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Organisation: Grandads Front Room
Project description: An emergency furniture and white goods programme for residents in crisis, for example, homelessness, job loss and domestic abuse. The initiative will take donated materials giving them a new lease of life and works with referral agencies to distribute ‘crisis packs’ quickly, offering dignity and support during difficult times.
Area: Arun
Results: Diverted 76,504kg of furniture, textiles, large and small electrical goods and engaged with 338 residents.
Legacy: The project has shown the benefits of good-quality second-hand furniture, and encouraged greater reuse, donation and redistribution of furniture and white goods within the community. They are continuing their work raising awareness of sustainability, community support and repair.
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Organisation: Resourceful Community Scrapstore
Project description: Offering free workshops teaching sewing and repair skills to reduce textile waste. Participants will learn to mend clothes and repurpose textiles into reusable items.
Area: Arun
Results: Diverted 349kg of sewing machines, fabric and sewing accessories and engaged with 138 residents.
Legacy: The project has built a lasting legacy by investing in sewing machines, training volunteers to maintain them and equipping the organisation to continue delivering workshops independently.
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Organisation: Sussex Green Living
Project description: A new monthly dry food refill service at the UK Harvest Community Food Hub, helping residents reduce both food and plastic waste. Includes an awareness campaign, a how-to guide and volunteer training to ensure long-term impact.
Area: Horsham
Results: Diverted 124kg of food, single use plastic packaging and bottles and engaged with 550,680 residents.
Legacy: Although the dry food refill service ultimately closed due to challenges competing with supermarket prices, the project has left a valuable legacy by producing guidance to help other groups develop similar initiatives. It also helped establish the bottle refill service as a popular everyday offering for local residents.
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Organisation: Tamil Learning Centre
Project description: Promoting sustainable behaviours among Tamil and South Indian communities by distributing bilingual educational materials, and raising awareness around recycling, donation, redistribution and repurposing.
Area: Crawley
Results: Diverted 686kg of food waste, textiles and small electrical items and engaged with 685 residents.
Legacy: The Tamil Learning Centre plans to continue raising awareness and sharing waste prevention messages at every community event and weekend activity, helping to embed these sustainable practices for the long term.
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Organisation: West Sussex Federation of Women’s Institutes
Project description: Hosting drop-in workshops to teach textile repair and creative reuse skills. Also providing educational worksheets to encourage long-term textile waste reduction in the community.
Area: Horsham
Results: Diverted 78kg of clothing, bags and bedding and engaged with 59 residents.
Legacy: The project's legacy is already secured, as the WSFWI Board of Trustees has agreed to continue the programme beyond September 2026 after recognising its positive impact.
Case studies
Case study - Tamil Learning Centre
Based in Crawley, the Tamil Learning Centre has promoted sustainable behaviours within Tamil and South Indian communities by distributing bilingual information and raising awareness of recycling, donating, redistributing and reusing items.
Through this work, the centre has helped divert 686kg of food waste, textiles and small electrical items from disposal and has engaged 685 residents.
The Tamil Learning Centre plans to continue sharing waste prevention messages at community events and weekend activities. By doing this, it aims to help embed sustainable behaviours across the community for the long term.
Case study - Resourceful Community Scrapstore
Through free sewing and repair workshops, Resourceful Community Scrapstore diverted 349kg of sewing machines, fabric and sewing accessories from waste.
The project helped 138 residents learn practical skills to repair clothes and turn unwanted textiles into reusable items. These figures only reflect the direct impact of the workshops and sewing kits provided.
The longer-term aim is for participants to use these skills at home, helping to reduce textile waste by repairing damaged items and reusing unwanted fabric.
The project has created a lasting legacy by investing in sewing machines, training volunteers to maintain them, and building the organisation's ability to deliver workshops independently in the future.
Some participants have become Scrapstore members and collected additional fabric, thread and other materials to continue sewing and repairing items at home.
Advice for future funded groups
We asked previously funded groups what advice they would pass on to those seeking funding in the future. Here are some of their thoughts and ideas.
“It helps to have a project which is closely aligned to what you already do, but building on that, so that you have an audience who are on board from the start.
It is useful to consult from the start with the people who will be delivering the project, as well as those who might want to participate in other ways, to make sure that the project is both filling a need and able to be delivered successfully.”
“Allocate someone to take pictures. I was usually so busy concentrating on teaching that I forgot to take pictures, hence how few we have."
“Our advice to future funded groups would be to maintain detailed records of all activities, outcomes and impacts throughout the lifetime of a project. Recording information regularly makes reporting much easier and provides valuable evidence of the difference your organisation is making.
Keeping accurate records also helps organisations monitor progress, identify opportunities for improvement and demonstrate value to funders, partners and the wider community.”
“Ensure there is clear and informed buy-in from all stakeholders from the outset. This is particularly important where a project relies on partners to host, deliver or promote activities. Taking time to agree expectations, roles and responsibilities at the start will help to avoid misunderstandings later.”
“Seek as many volunteers as possible."
“Ensure the potential project is fully evaluated and costed, a comprehensive Publicity Plan is in place and how will it be staffed.”