Viva Lewes Issue #156 September 2019

FEATURE
DIYgogo
The virtual skip
Alexander Thomson
had his idea for
DIYgogo when he
spent a year cycling
to China. “I cycled
through Kazakhstan”,
he told me, “and it
lent me so much perspective.
The people
had nothing, but had
so much more than we
do in our Western madness. Everything was so
much more cherished.”
When he got back to the UK, he says, he was
“overwhelmed by the contrast”. And he decided
to set up an enterprise with social purpose – to
contribute some small difference.
This was the birth of DIYgogo, a website
designed to put people in touch with each other
easily, so they can recycle, and access, unwanted,
free building materials.
“I work on a building site,” Alex says, “and the
level of waste is stupendous. So, here’s the idea in
a nutshell: you walk past a skip, and in it are a pile
of bricks, or a bath, and you think that’s just what
I need. Well, DIYgogo is like that virtual skip.”
He’s been beavering way on his project – a notfor-profit
social enterprise – for a couple of years
now. The website had been live for four months
when we spoke.
So, how’s it going, I asked.
One major challenge, Alex reports, is changing
the mindset of building companies – whom he
desperately wants to get onboard. “They all say
it’s a fantastic idea, very needed,” he says. “But
it’s hard to change the nature of the way people
do business: they’re just not minded that way.”
He’ll keep trying and, in the meantime, the site
is live and available to anyone anywhere across
the UK. Whether you’ve building materials to
shift, or you’re looking
to pick some up,
log on and see what’s
happening round
here. The company
has been concentrating
recently on
generating interest
across the South East,
especially in Lewes
and Brighton.
DIYgogo bills itself as an enterprise with both
environmental and social objectives. Environmentally,
it hopes to contribute to a more
sustainable future. Socially, it wants to help the
less fortunate members of our society. “We want
to do this,” Alex tells me, “not just by enabling
access to free materials, but we’d also like, over
time, to grow to provide building-work training
for young people. These skills have been lost.
For so long, we’ve relied in this country on
Eastern Europeans. Now we’re losing that work
force – the pay’s not much better, so it’s no longer
worth people’s while and, of course, Brexit’s
looming. We’d like to help young people learn
the skills they need to end up in employment in
the building trade.”
Currently, working on the project are Alex
and a part-time partner, who does the marketing,
mainly through social media. “We’re also
looking to develop an app,” says Alex. “It’s what
people are asking for today – an app that’s easier
and quicker to use than going through a few
steps on a website.”
It’s the world we live in, we agree, shaking our
heads.
But if it helps enable good ideas, and new ways
of working – like DIYgogo – well, maybe that’s
not all bad… Charlotte Gann
diygogo.co.uk
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