Sustainable School Shop

Our Vision

To reduce the cost of education to participants by encouraging re-use and re-cycling through innovation, technology and value adding, whilst building a more sustainable school community.

Our Tools

0. Technology;
0. Incentive;
0. People Empowerment

Our Values

Sustainability:

We are committed to building a more Sustainable School Community by:

0. Extending the life and usefulness of school items;
0. Reducing waste;
0. Assisting children at the earliest of ages to appreciate, respect and value their belongings.

Value:

Sustainable School Shop members enjoy:

0. Restoring value to those perfectly good and often discarded school items;
0. The time savings from our interactive site;
0. Inexpensive annual Membership;
0. Other benefits our online service provides.

School Benefit:

The Sustainable School Shop supports school communities by contributing at least 10 % of all gross sales to schools. We will pay these funds to the Parent Association or Student Union of the school your children attend.

Kindergartens and Pre-Schools receive special support through additional funds being provided by the Sustainable School Shop: all membership fees collected from Kindergarden/Pre-School parents are returned to those Schools in full.

Local School Community:

Our system promotes greater contact between parents or students within the localized school community. Trading of goods frequently occurs during pick up or drops off times.

Some items may not have much monetary value, but may still be next to perfect and certainly "'too good to throw out". The design of our membership facilitates members placing advertisements to give away these items to reduce waste and help others.

Many organisations (ie kindergartens, hospitals etc) will greatly benefit by placing Wanted Advertisements and identifying the goods they need that others may be willing to donate.      

Some School surplus may also have little monetary value but may assist another school elsewhere.  Our system helps to facilitate these exchanges.  

Our Business

The Sustainable School Shop was born out of our frustration at not being able to find suitable second hand school items and the reverse; and the realisation of the resultant immense waste that must occur every year within most school communities.  Further research led to the discovery that these frustrations were not just confined to parents but also to kindergartens, schools and community organisations such as sporting clubs and dance schools.

Simple solutions are always the best. The uptake of the Internet and the interactive and low cost nature of this technology offered the perfect opportunity to launch a service that encouraged and empowered parents, schools, and other organisations to reuse and recycle these schools items, without placing prohibitive imposts on any particular segment: parents, schools or small community groups. In addition it was important that people receive what they consider to be real value to reward their efforts in re-use and re-cycling.

Being outside our area of expertise, the construction of the Sustainable School Shop site was outsourced to Alliance Software on industry recommendations; and what we thought would be a simple easy project has, as always, not been as simple in the “doing”.

We trust you will find our endeavours have resulted in a service that is easy to use, saves time, helps the environment; and continues to not only provide benefits for you and your family, but a meaningful dividend back to your school community through the encouragement of interaction and the School Benefit.

Our People

Kathy

Married with one 6 year old child. 7 years successfully owning and operating retail businesses with a strong customer service focus, 2 years National Marketing Manager for a large Multi-National company. Extensive experience in administration, sales, and customer service. Excellent communicator.

Richard

Approximately 11 years in retail with a focus on customer service, marketing and advertising. Company Director to several small companies. Professional fisherman for many years. Experienced in industry/government liaison, consultative processes, sustainability and living in an increasingly globalised world.  

Alliance Software

Alliance Software are the computer programmers responsible for the construction and development of the Sustainable School Shop Website. They have helped take the Sustainable School Shop idea and turn it into reality for all to see and use. Alliance Software will continue development work as the website constantly evolves to meet parent, student and schools needs. 

Filmtime

Filmtime Media Group believe in adding value to browsers visual experience online. The team at Filmtime Media Group pride themselves on providing the best visual solutions for corporate, educational, health, retail and a variety of other industries.