aboutus
We sell so much more than sofas!
SOFA Project is a reuse, recycling and rehabilitation charity and social enterprise
We sell good quality
second-hand furniture, appliances and homewares in three Bristol shops and on eBay
Affordable
Helping you to furnish your
home on a budget
Reuse & Recycling
Protecting the environment
by reducing landfill waste
Rehabilitation
Providing training and employment opportunities
How we work
Most of our stock has been donated from local households and businesses. We also collect bulky donated items for free and deliver for a small charge in most Bristol postcodes.
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The money we make by selling furniture and white goods is used to help us to achieve our social and environmental objectives.
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SOFA Project also supports low income families by providing furniture and white goods to people under the Local Crisis and Prevention Fund voucher scheme run by Bristol City Council.
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We're also proud to work with HMP Bristol and HMP Eastwood Park to provide our Gloucester Road charity shop with hand-painted and upcycled furniture. The prisoners in our workshops thoughtfully restore and refresh preloved pieces, giving them a new purpose while learning valuable skills to support their rehabilitation.
Bristol warehouse
We have a large warehouse where furniture is cleaned and sorted and appliances fully refurbished.
The warehouse has electrical, flatpack and upcycling workshops and it’s where we can offer training and support to local people excluded from the workforce.
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Electrical items that can’t be re-used are broken down and stripped of key components which are then recycled as parts for other appliances. SOFA Project is licensed by the Environment agency to dispose of electrical waste (AATF).
We also sell paint!
​An estimated 50 million litres of paint of the 320 million litres sold in the UK each year is wasted or unused. This paint is either thrown away or stored in homes despite a large percentage of it still being usable.
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We are part of a scheme called Community RePaint which aims to combat this and both of our shops are stocked with a large variety of usable paint at very low prices. We have a wide range of colours of both interior and exterior paints.
You can also donate paint at both of our Bristol shops. The paint tin must be at least half full and in usable condition.
What is SOFA Project?
We're a charity - our charitable purpose is to help relieve poverty, promote social inclusion and protect the environment through reuse and recycling. We're governed by a board of Trustees - find out more about them here.
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We are also a 'social enterprise' - we've got a clear purpose to help people and planet, we use a business model to generate most of our income from trading and and we use any profits for good. No private owners or shareholders here!
Our Story
SOFA Project was founded in Bristol in 1980 as a local project run by volunteers in the local community and funded by a grant. The project aimed to collect unwanted household furniture and make it available to people in the local community on low incomes.
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It also identified the need to help local people more easily dispose of their unwanted household goods and at the same time could reduce the number of perfectly re-usable items going to landfill.
The project was called ‘Shifting Old Furniture Around’ and that's how we got the name SOFA Project! It was so successful that the organisers decided to set up a charity and open a shop...and the rest is history!