Pack for Good saves lives

May 18, 2022

Falmouth and Exeter students have donated the almost £50,000 to the British Heart Foundation since our campuses began supporting the Pack for Good campaign in 2015.

FX Plus has been supporting Pack for Good since 2015 meaning that tonnes of unwanted items have been diverted from landfill or an incinerator as well as thousands of pounds being raised for the BHF to fund life-saving research.

Pack for Good targets students who are moving out, encouraging them to donate unwanted items including books, household goods and clothes. University, FX Plus and Students’ Union staff are also invited to donate.

According to the most recent (2021) BHF report, £8,792 worth of goods was donated via FX Plus in 2021 alone. This is a significant increase from the previous two years of COVID-19 restrictions when not many students were able to be living on campus or even in Cornwall.

That summer, 346 bags were collected from FX Plus-run accommodation (and staff) and 282 bags from private student accommodation. And since 2015, 28.5 tonnes of unwanted items have been diverted from landfill.

Our Halls team, based at Glasney Lodge, is supporting the Pack for Good campaign again this year. Collection points are around student accommodation areas, on and off campus, including a main point at Glasney Lodge Reception. Staff and students can also pick up their own collection bags from Glasney.

The Halls team also collects unwanted items for local food banks, with trolleys in Glasney Lodge.

According to the BHF:

• There are around 7.6 million people living with heart and circulatory diseases in the UK – an ageing and growing population and improved survival rates from heart and circulatory events could see these numbers rise still further.

• We estimate that in the UK more than half of us will get a heart or circulatory condition in our lifetime.

• Around twice as many people are living with heart and circulatory diseases in the UK than with cancer and Alzheimer’s disease combined.

• Heart and circulatory diseases cause around a quarter of all deaths in the UK; that’s more than 160,000 deaths each year, or 460 each day – that’s one death every three minutes.

• Around 47,000 people under the age of 75 in the UK die from heart and circulatory diseases each year.

• Since the BHF was established the annual number of deaths from heart and circulatory diseases in the UK has fallen by around a half.