How we calculate savings

Every time an item is reused through Warp It, two things have not happened. The item has not been thrown away. And nobody has had to buy a new one. Everything Warp It reports about money comes from those two facts, and from who was on each side of the exchange.

This page explains what we count and how. It also says plainly what we do not count yet.

One chair

Take one office chair.

• Your Estates team no longer needs it. They list it on Warp It.
• Somebody else claims it and carries on using it.

Warp It records two benefits.

At the giving end, the chair was not thrown away. That avoids the cost of disposing of it. We call this disposal cost avoided.

At the receiving end, nobody had to buy a new chair. That avoids the cost of buying one, and the cost of the paperwork that goes with buying anything. We call this purchase cost avoided.

Add the two together and you have the total cost avoidance for that reuse.

Purchase cost avoided

Purchase cost avoided is what it would reasonably cost to buy an equivalent new item, plus the cost of the purchase itself.

• The item. Every item has its own replacement cost: what one equivalent new item costs. It is not the second-hand value, the resale value or what you originally paid. It is shown on the item as “Replacement cost”, per item, and your administrators can correct it. Only if an item has no replacement cost of its own do we use a standard figure for its category. For our chair, say £180.
• The purchase. Raising a purchase order and paying an invoice costs staff time. Warp It adds a fixed amount for this to every claim, once per claim, however many items are in it. The standard amount is £50. Your organisation can change it, including to zero, on the Custom Metrics page.

So claiming one chair avoids £180 + £50 = £230. Claiming ten chairs in one go avoids 10 × £180 + £50 = £1,850, because it was still only one purchase.

Disposal cost avoided

Disposal cost avoided is the item's weight multiplied by what it costs your organisation to get rid of a kilogram of waste.

The weight. We use the weight given when the item was listed. If none was given, we use the average weight for its category. Our chair weighs 12 kg.

The cost per kilogram. This comes from the listing organisation's own waste settings, on the Custom Metrics page:

cost per kg = waste multiplier × (skip cost + 2 hours of staff time) ÷ the kilograms a skip holds

• Skip cost is what you pay for a skip.
• Two hours of staff time are added to every skip for the handling involved in filling it, at your staff cost per hour.
• The kilograms a skip holds depend on how tightly it is usually packed: 5,000 kg tight, 3,000 kg moderate, 1,500 kg loose.
• The waste multiplier lets you reflect the true cost of waste where it is more than the skip charge. Most organisations leave it at 1.

If your organisation has never filled these in, we use the standard values: a £180 skip, £10 an hour, loosely packed, multiplier 1. That works out at (£180 + £20) ÷ 1,500 = about 13.3p a kg.

So the 12 kg chair avoids 12 × £0.1333 = £1.60 of disposal cost at the standard values. An organisation paying more for its waste will see more.

Worked out once, then kept

The figures for each claim are worked out at the moment the item is claimed, using the settings in force at that moment. They are then stored with the claim.

If you change your skip cost next year, claims made from then on use the new figure. Claims already made keep the figure they were given. A number you have already reported will not move under you.

Who gets the credit

The rule is simple: the giver gets the disposal side, the receiver gets the purchase side.

Inside your organisation

Your Estates team gives the chair to your Finance team. Both are part of your organisation, so your organisation gets both sides.

Within the organisation, each person gets their own side. The person who listed the chair gets the £1.60. The person who claimed it gets the £230.

Between two organisations

Your organisation gives the chair to a neighbouring council. Each gets its own side, and nobody gets both.

The same chair is never counted as a saving twice.

To a charity or a school

Your organisation gives the chair to a charity or a school. Giving something away is generous, but it is not a saving. So it is counted differently.

• You still avoided throwing the chair away, so you keep the £1.60.
• The chair's value is shown as Donated, against your organisation and against the person who listed it.
• The charity or school sees the same amount as Donations received.
• Neither amount is added to anybody's savings total.

Whether an organisation is a charity or a school is taken from the sector on its Warp It account at the moment of the claim. If an organisation's sector is corrected later, claims already made keep the answer they were given.

People and organisations add up

A person's total cost avoidance is the purchase cost avoided on the items they claimed, plus the disposal cost avoided on the items they listed.

Add up every member of your organisation and you get your organisation's figure exactly. Nobody's figure can be bigger than their organisation's.

People who list a lot of items for colleagues may notice their own figure is modest. That is because the purchase saving belongs to the colleague who needed the item. The value they gave to charities and schools is shown beside their figure as Donated.

The network total

The total on the Warp It home page is every organisation's total cost avoidance added together. Donations to charities and schools are shown beside it, separately, and are not part of it. Demo and test accounts are left out.

Carbon and weight

Weight kept in use is the weight of each item reused, as above.

Carbon (CO₂e) avoided comes from each item's category. Making and supplying a new item causes emissions in the supply chain. Reusing an old item instead avoids them.

• The source. We use the UK Government's greenhouse gas conversion factors, published by DEFRA in 2012. Table 13 of that guide gives spend-based (indirect) emission factors: kilograms of CO₂e for each pound spent, by type of product.
• The figure per item. Each category carries one carbon figure per item. It is the category's standard replacement cost multiplied by the spend-based factor for that type of product. These figures were carried over from the original Warp It platform.
• The figure per claim. A claim's carbon is the category's figure times the number of items. It is worked out when the item is claimed and stored with the claim, like the money figures.

The carbon figure follows the category, not the price on the item itself. An item with no category has no carbon on record. Spend-based factors give an estimate, not a measurement, so treat CO₂e figures as indicative.

On your reports, carbon and weight are currently shown against the organisation that listed the item.

Trees planted and cars off the road are there to help put a carbon figure into perspective. They are not a separate benefit and are never added to anything. We divide the CO₂e figure by 730 kg for a tree (what one broadleaf tree absorbs over its lifetime) and by 2,300 kg for a car (one year of driving a typical family car). Both conversions are being checked.

Time saved

Each claim is counted as one purchase that did not need to be made. Warp It counts 30 minutes of staff time saved per claim as standard, however many items it covers. Your organisation can change this on the Custom Metrics page.

Restored figures

A few organisations have figures restored for a period when the original platform's records were lost. Where that applies, your lifetime figures include them and your reports say so.

Off-platform reuse

Your organisation's administrators can record reuse that happened outside Warp It on the Off-Platform Reuse page, one item at a time or from a spreadsheet. Each record is worked out by the same rules as a claim:

• The value is the value per item you enter times the quantity. If you leave it blank, we use the sub-category's standard value.
• Carbon and weight come from the sub-category.
• Reused within your organisation, it counts both the purchase cost and the disposal cost avoided.
• Given to another organisation, it counts the disposal cost avoided. Given to a charity or a school, that too, and its value shows as Donated.

These records are in your savings, carbon and weight figures. Your reports name them on their own line (“Off-platform reuse”), with a switch to show Warp It activity only. They are never counted as listings, claims, time saved or active users.

Forecasts: how many staff take part

Our savings calculator and the assessment forecast estimate what Warp It could save an organisation. They start from how many staff would use it.

We assume about 12% of staff order, buy or dispose of furniture and equipment as part of their normal work. With Warp It, those staff would look on Warp It before buying new. They would also use it to pass on items they no longer need. So we count 12% of staff as active users after 12 months.

You can choose a different figure, from 5% to 25%, on the calculator and on the assessment forecast. The low estimate uses half of the figure and the high estimate one and a half times it.

What we do not count yet

We would rather leave something out than count it badly. These are not in any figure today:

• Disposal impacts postponed. Reuse puts off the day an item is thrown away, and with it the emissions from landfill, incineration or recycling. We do not yet put a number on this.
• Wider effects of making new things. Avoiding a new purchase also avoids the raw materials, water and energy used to make and deliver it. Apart from carbon, we do not yet count these.
• Donations by type of recipient. Donated is shown as one figure (with charities and schools apart on the home page). A breakdown by community groups, public sector and private sector is planned.
• Value shared within your organisation. Recognising the value of items a person passes to colleagues, shown beside their figure and never added to it, is planned.

Questions

If a figure looks wrong, contact Warp It. Tell us which page, which figure and the date range you were looking at. We can show you how any figure was worked out, claim by claim.