Computer refurbishing was started ‘by accident’ in 1995 as a result of a charity called Bootstrap in Hackney collecting waste paper for recycling from the City of London. A bank gave them some computers, along with a lot of waste paper, and suggested that the PCs could be usefully recycled too.
Bootstrap happened to have a volunteer who decided to attempt to repair these computers, if only to pass them on to local students who could not afford new ones. Andy Tidman was so successful at refurbishing IT equipment that Bootstrap successfully applied for a one year grant from the then Department for the Environment, expanded the project and called it "CyberCycle”.
