Youth homelessness charity Depaul UK has launched a new business initiative selling cardboard boxes to home-movers, setting a fundraising target of £3m within the next five years.
 
The charity, known for its innovative iHobo app which became the most downloaded app of its time, has launched a social enterprise named the Depaul Box Company, which aims to capture a share of the UK’s multi-million pound house-moving cardboard box market.

Its sale of cardboard boxes to movers will see its profit going towards preventing young people having to sleep on one, said the charity. Depaul UK CEO Martin Houghton-Brown said that the “real, visceral and often distressing” association between cardboard boxes and those sleeping rough inspired the launch of the social enterprise.

“The Depaul Box Company flips that association to a positive one,” he said. “No-one should have to make a cardboard box their home, and buying our cardboard boxes will ensure nobody has to.”

Cardboard boxes will be sold at £30 per pack of 10, £40 per pack of 20 and £60 per pack of 30. Depaul claims that two packs of boxes can take a young person off the street for one night, and that the entire value of the market (3.8 million households have either moved house in the last year or will move house in the year ahead) will allow Depaul to provide one million nights of shelter to young homeless people.

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