AnyJunk Facts & Figures

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Fascinating little facts about AnyJunk

First day of trading	25th October 2004
First junk collection	We cleared a Clapham flat for two lovely older ladies. Our hoover blew black all over the carpet and our gloves were so new, they put white fluff all over our red sweaters. But our clients loved us and told all their friends.
Bookings for 2005 when we closed for Christmas break 2004	Nil
First office	Upstairs in a tiny, leaky room with a broken heater in Wandsworth
Most famous client	That would be telling
Most demanding client	See above
Joke most often cracked by passers-by	"Do you take husbands too?"
Employee with most bizarre CV credential	World naked poker champion
Question that stumps most clients	"How come no-one came up with this idea before you?"

Interesting junk we’ve cleared and what we did with it

To-scale wooden helicopter made by Oxfam to raise awareness of arms sales to Africa	Recycled as wood
200+ mini-deodorants, toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes	Donated to the homeless
Numerous running, rowing and cycling machines	Passed on to new homes (probably to be collected in 2 years time!)
Hanging chandelier light from Lambeth Palace	Went to a film prop company
Coffin (empty)	Recycled as wood
Skoda advert 2 tonne cake car	Used as compost on East End allotments
100 tropical office plants	Donated to the Reptile House of London Zoo
Canoe	Launched into the North Sea, but sank quickly (we guess that’s why it was junked)
500+ ‘adult’ toys from an online retailer	Sent to WEEE recycling facility
A life size plastic baby in a large pickling jar	We hid it quickly because it gave everyone nightmares
Early works by a successful artist because he had no space left in his studio	Some went to employees and the rest went to quite an ‘edgy’ nightclub
Signed first edition of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations	Sold at Sotheby’s for one million pounds (….yeah right!)

And some figures...

AnyJunk earns about 95% of its income from charging people to clear their junk. We earn the other 5% from reselling junk – mainly scrap metal, but also things like good quality furniture, which we sell to specialist dealers. Each month we give back 35% of that ‘resale income’ to our truck teams as a bonus, and employees with the best customer feedback, productivity and landfill diversion are rewarded the most. In case you’re interested, a truck team member’s monthly resale bonus typically represents an extra 50p-£1.50 per hour.

As for our costs, the three biggies are our truck teams’ wages, running our vehicles, and disposal fees. Disposing of mixed waste at a commercial transfer station or recycling facility costs between £75 - £115 (excluding VAT) per tonne, so that’s why we have to charge a bit extra for very heavy waste. We also have to pay extra for special waste like fluorescent tubes, fridges and CRTs since these have to be processed separately because of the hazardous materials in them. In general, we aim to make a gross profit of between 30%-35% on every collection we undertake. This profit goes to the cover our overheads which include salaries for our office staff, training, IT, rent, insurance and marketing.

This all results in an average 10p net profit on every £1.00 we take – which means we can afford to keep reinvesting in more trucks, more people and more growth. It also means that our bank manager is nice to us...which, in these tricky times, is no bad thing!