Every year 22 million pieces of furniture are discarded in the UK with around only 17% of this being recycled. Over half of the bulky items that end up in the tip however are thought to be reusable with a little bit of repair.

However, as consumers have become more concerned with environmental issues and the ongoing cost of living crisis leading many to look for ways to make their purchases go further than ever before, interest in upcycling has steadily grown.

Upcycling aims to take something broken or unloved like old furniture and breathe new life into it and in recent years the trend has seen the introduction of many popular second-hand retailers like Shpock and Vinted.

Social media app Tik Tok currently has over 7.6 billion videos featuring upcycling as a hashtag.

Inspired by this, leading tool hire company Brandon Hire Station launched a nationwide contest challenging young children to consider how they could upcycle different items of furniture around their homes.

With the lucky winner bagging themselves a trip for four to LEGOLand.

To help spark the children’s creativity, the company created a series of templates based on the most commonly featured furniture items under the hashtag #UpcycledFurniture on Tik Tok.

According to their research, the top 10 most common household items featured in an upcycling project were:

Drawers
Standard tables
Cabinets
Bedside tables
Dressers
Shelves
Desks
Coffee tables
Bookshelves
Chairs

Over a fifth of all the entries Brandon Hire Station received had chosen to upcycle a bookcase, which proved the most popular item among the next generation of upcyclers.

Drawers were the second most popular type of entry, with the winning submission featuring a chest of drawers that had been re-designed to resemble a birthday cake.

One of the creative submissions the company received was a caterpillar toy created from empty toilet roll tubes.