The NCWRP and the community wood recycling social enterprises that we help to set up and develop are committed to making as big a contribution as possible to environmental improvement and social justice.

Quite simply, we are in the business of saving resources and creating work and training for local disadvantaged people.

Most of the collected material would, at very best, have been “downcycled” into woodchip or, even worse, would have ended up decomposing in landfill sites - releasing CO2 and contributing to climate change. In addition, by creating jobs, training and volunteering opportunities, we are helping people to develop confidence and self-esteem and learn a range of useful transferable skills that will help them to get back into paid work.

The charts below show how much waste wood was rescued nationwide by our network of community wood recyclers, and how much of it was pushed up the waste hierarchy into reuse, and how many jobs a training days we provided.

Wood Waste Rescued in 2010
Blue bars show the total wood waste in tonnes rescued from the waste stream
in 2010 by community wood recycling enterprises = 5,131.35 tonnes
Red bars show the proportion of the collected wood that was pushed up the waste
hierarchy into reuse; the highest form of recycling = 1033.48 tonnes / 20.14%

Volunteering/Training days provided in 2010
Blue bars show number of training and volunteering days provided in 2010 by
community wood recycling enterprises for disadvaantaged people = 13, 005 days

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