Scrap

We collect suitable scrap materials from businesses across the UK. We then make these materials available at low cost in our scrapstore.

To get automatic updates on the latest stock sign up to the Storenews email list. You can see photos of the latest things to arrive in store (and get ideas of what to do with them) by visiting the Gallery. Don’t forget, you can also follow us on Twitter and become a friend on Facebook.

We try to sell things as cheaply as possible. The cheapness is very much what we’re about. However, we have to cover Orinoco’s running costs. We don’t have any corporate, state or private sponsors; we do not receive any maintenance grants or payments from the City or County Councils. When you pay for your goods, you pay to keep Orinoco running.

Orinoco is far cheaper than art shops, DIY shops and even other scrapstores. How do we do this? By keeping our overheads low. Orinoco is almost entirely run by volunteers.

General Scrap

Most of the items in the store are ‘scrap’. The internationally agreed measure of ‘scrap’ for pricing purposes is the ‘carrier bag full’. We will charge you £2 (or £1 if you are a member) for each unit – carrier bag – of scrap you want. If you have filled a box, binliner, barrel or other container we will estimate the number of units your container contains. If you don’t agree, feel free to haggle (a bit), that’s half the fun of shopping at Orinoco but please, keep it fun. When the storekeeper says they’re not haggling anymore, they mean it: accept the price or put it back.

Big or special things

Some of the scrap items are two big to fit in a carrier bag or have particular value. We will occasionally price these items individually or by group (e.g. 10 for a £1). When we do this you will usually see the price on the item. Often the storekeeper will estimate the price of a large item. If you don’t agree, you could always try and make an offer. You never know your luck.

Things on rolls

Sometimes things on rolls are priced by the metre. Unroll the fabric, paper or whatever that you need and agree a price with the storekeeper. If in doubt, ask.

Whole rolls

Small rolls of fabric, paper and roller blind material are either individually priced or, if they are small enough, may be added to a bag of scrap. We don’t generally let customers buy whole rolls of  fabric, paper, card, etc. This is because we would rather sell a metre here and a metre there to lots of customers than see a single customer walk off with the lot!

We make all kinds of exceptions to this general rule when customers have special projects or when they don’t know how much they want and will bring back the remainders. Occasionally we get a bumper crop of big rolls of paper, card or fabric and and selling by the roll becomes the norm.

Gorgeous things

Sometimes, something comes into the store that is so gorgeous that we wish to maximise the cash return on it. When this happens we will cynically charge per item. We’ve got a charity to run remember – cherry picking like this keeps all the other prices down.

Fair Play

We ask our customers to respect the storekeeper’s decisions on pricing. We work to ensure that all our storekeepers price items and negotiate as fairly as possible. However, it is inevitable that sometimes an individual storekeeper might under or overprice an item. If you think you have been treated unfairly and wish to question a storekeeper’s decision please contact the store manager or the committee.