September 2011

Record month for waste timber collections
In a repeat of last month, August became the best month ever for collections from national builders – with almost 440 tonnes collected from a record 101 building sites across the country. 

Homes & Gardens Magazine
The Next Door Wood Store (our website promoting the range of wonderful products made by our members from recycled wood) was featured in Homes & Gardens Magazine – the leading “homestyle” publication with a circulation of more than 130,000. The article led to a surge of interest in the site from all over the country and with lots of well-made and useful products available, the site is set to go from strength to strength.  

August 2011

Permaculture Magazine
The NCWRP’s work was covered in a three page spread in the Summer edition of Permaculture Magazine. The feature led to calls from several potential new entrepreneurs who were interested in setting up community wood recycling enterprises in their areas.

Record month for waste timber collections
Figures for collections from national builders smashed all records this month - with more than 400 tonnes of wood being rescued, generating more than £60,000 of income for our members.

Breyer Group reaches 1000 tonne milestone
Congratulations to Essex-based construction company the Breyer Group who has become the NCWRP’s first national partner to reach the fantastic milestone of diverting 1000 tonnes of wood waste from their sites. With a strong commitment to sustainability and working with the social enterprise sector, Breyer are blazing a trail and are beacon of good practise – showing what can be achieved in waste reduction and the reuse of resources by implementing good practise.

July  2011

Network gains a new member 
A very big welcome to Roots – The Timber Reuse Project who have just started operating out of premises in Gravesend, Kent. They increase our coverage of the south eastern corner of the country! Good luck to the project co-ordinator Cath Harris and everyone else involved.

Bristol Wood Recycling Project celebrates 7th birthday
Congratulations to everyone at Bristol WRP which reached the grand old age of 7 on the 10th of June. The enterprise has come a long way since its inception back in 2003 and has recently taken on new staff to enable them to continue to grow.

Jericho Wood Recycling Grand Opening
Many congratulations to everyone at Jericho Wood Recycling on their official opening on the 16th of June. They have already been providing wood collection services over the last few months and also have a retail outlet, The Wood Shack, open to the public. The NCWRP’s Richard Mehmed was among those present at this very well attended event and was very impressed by the range and quality of the recycled wood products available at the Wood Shack.

May best month yet for NBCS
May was the best month yet for the National Builders Collection Scheme (NBCS) with over 2800 cubic yards of wood waste collected from our national builder clients and pushed up the waste hierarchy. Collections were made from 78 sites for 30 different builders by 18 different members of the network as the scheme continues to expand.

This May was such a fantastic month for the NBCS that it’s interesting to compare it to the previous Mays the scheme has been running for.

The NBCS as a whole went through the 4000 tonne mark this May since its inception at the beginning of 2008. The total now stands at 4239 tonnes of waste wood collected and saved from landfill (to end of May 2011). With the fantastic growth we’ve been experiencing we expect to smash through the 5000 tonne barrier too later this year and maybe even reach 6000 tonnes by the end of the year!

The NBCS also collected from its 300th site with the total now standing at 314 different sites collected from by the end of this May.

 

April 2011

March best month ever on NBCS
March 2011 was a record-breaking month for the National Builders Collection Scheme with 18 members of our network collecting between them over 2,700 cubic yards of waste wood from 72 different national builder sites. That’s a lot of wood saved from landfill!

As you can see from the below there has been massive growth in the cubic yardage collected under the scheme in the last 3 financial years and pushed up the waste hierarchy. The total for 2008/09 was 2,172 yds³, nearly 6 times as much in 2009/10 at 12,682.5 yds³ and not far of doubling again in 2010/11 at 22,353.5 yds³. In fact 3 individual months in 2010/11 beat the entire year total for 2008/09!

The number of sites collected from also shows massive increases over the lifetime of the scheme – particularly in the last couple of months!

We have also seen big year on year increases in the number of network members we’ve been able to give collections to through the NBCS.

NCWRP featured in Permaculture  magazine
The latest (Summer 2011) edition of Permaculture magazine has an article on how Richard Mehmed started the Brighton & Hove Wood Recycling Project and has gone on to “franchise” the business model through the NCWRP. The article’s already generated a lot of interest particularly from potential entrepreneurs wanting to set up wood recycling social enterprises in areas of the country not yet covered by the network.

March 2011

Visit by Lord Henley to the Brighton and Hove Wood Recycling Project
DEFRA Minister Lord Henley visited Brighton on 31st March 2011 to find out how we work with builders to reduce and reuse construction waste. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment had accepted an invitation to visit us as part of his desire to learn more about recycling “at ground level” and how more waste can be diverted from landfill. We spoke to the minister at length about how DEFRA could put more effort in to promoting wood reuse rather than promoting just wood “downcycling”... the minister was certainly sympathetic.

Al Jazeera interview
NCWRP’s Richard Mehmed was interviewed by the international news organisation at the Brighton Woodstore this month as part of a new news segment they’re doing on eco stuff for their English language broadcasting. It will be broadcast in June to their viewership of over 200 million.

January/February 2011

New Network Member
A very big welcome to Woodchuck Recycling in Milton Keynes who became operational in mid-January and have already done their first wood collection for a local company. Good luck to directors Phil Gallagher and Morris Dickson and everyone involved with the project.

Massive Year on Year Growth in the National Builders Collection Scheme (NBCS)
Now that we have all the data in for 2010 we can chart the growth of the NBCS over the 3 years of its existence.

Total Cubic Yards Collected Through the NBCS in the Last 3 Years

Totals: 2008 1270 yds³ 2009 10016.5 yds³ 2010 19507.5 yds³ (Apr-Jan)

Total Number of Sites Collected from through the NBCS in the Last 3 Years

Total Number of Enterprises Collecting through the NBCS in the Last 3 Years

 

November 2010

A Tribute to John Poole (27.11.1947-08.10.2010)
 Founder of TRiM (Timber Recycling in Manchester)

I first met John when he came in to the wood recycling Project in Brighton back in 2000.

I am not sure how he heard about us, but he seemed keen on the idea and he stayed for a chat and a cup of tea, and asked all the right questions. Of course we get visited by a lot of people who want to set up, but very few of them actually get anything going. So I didn’t think much of it.
But he had decided that it could work in Manchester... and he made it happen.

Of course it wasn’t going to be easy, I recall the difficulty he had getting the right partners and there wasn’t any funding around. But he believed in the concept, knew it would work and persevered - well beyond the time when others would have given up.

Eventually I got a call from John asking me to come up to Manchester and go to a meeting with him. It was an early start, so I had to travel up the night before and he kindly offered to put me up.
That’s when I started to get to know John and understand what kind of person he was; it was the first of many visits to Manchester to follow the development of TRiM and many good nights crashing at his flat.

He was often promised support from this or that agency that didn’t materialize, so in the end, in 2003 ... he just did it himself, he found the money himself, bought a truck, sorted out premises and got on with it. And TRiM is still going, still saving resources and still serving its community.
So what kind of person was John for me?

The first thing that struck me about John was his total commitment to social justice – he was a really selfless person, whose motivation genuinely seemed to be about caring for the planet and helping people. I’d hear him at TRiM asking the volunteers what they would like to do – I’d be whispering “tell them to do this, order them to do that”. But that wasn’t his style - John had a thoroughly gentle way of managing people ... but it worked - the work got done and people felt empowered by him. He was totally respected.

His home, when I visited it, was testament to his love of wood and his skill in working with it. I’d turn up in my suit and tie – trying to look dapper for a meeting - and he’d have the bench out in the middle of his lounge, his tools spread about the floor, chiselling away at a gate or bookcase. I would end up covered in dust whilst hanging on to one end of a bit of 4x2.

He was genuinely one of the cleverest and wisest people I have come across. We spent evenings with him trying to explain to me how weather works or why the flow of water around Anglesey was so treacherous (he was an accomplished sailor who loved the North Wales coast). And whilst discussing the disempowering nature of corporate capitalism, or the importance of community enterprise, we’d nip out to Asda along the road to pick up a family sized Tiramisu and stuff the whole lot! 

As a “wood recycling business advisor” to John, I often felt I was nagging him: John, you’re too nice, John, you think too much of the others, John you’re too caring. He took it serenely. My goodness, I’d be very proud if that was the worst that people could say about me.

I saw John as a force for good; he served his community and TRiM is part of his wonderful legacy.
It was a privilege and pleasure to know John and our network of community wood recyclers, and certainly my life has been thoroughly enriched by him.

- Richard Mehmed

Richard Mehmed of the NCWRP and John Poole of TRiM in 2009
Donations in John’s memory can be made to the Ellen McArthur Trust or via the NCWRP

October 2010

NCWRP receives visit from South Korea
The NCWRP was recently visited by a party of South Koreans that work in job creation for disadvantaged people. They were in the UK for a week looking at possibility of replicating some of our best social enterprise models. They toured and were impressed by the Brighton enterprise and were intrigued how the NCWRP has replicated the model so quickly with relatively little financial support.

NCWRP goes to Hollywood (well Pinewood Studios!)
This month our managing director, Richard Mehmed, visited the set of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie  at Pinewood Studios to discuss the possibility of our network collecting and recycling some of the wood used in constructing the sets. Unfortunately he didn’t get to meet Johnny Depp but it was a very constructive visit. Watch this space for further news.

September 2010

August tops July for our National Builders Collection Scheme (NBCS)

July was a fantastic month for the NBCS but August has proved to be in a whole different league! 2471.5 yds³ (over 247 tonnes) of wood were collected from 17 different national builders over 57 of their sites. These included 9 Leadbitter sites, 8 apiece for Breyer and Kier and 7 for Taylor Wimpey. 19 members of our network of wood recycling social enterprises (86%) made collections under the scheme. This was all record-shattering stuff and a reflection of everyone’s hard work.

The below comparison of August 2010 and the same month last year provide a snapshot of the progress of the NBCS.  On many of the indicators it’s more than doubled in 12 months!

	August 2009	August 2010	% Increase
Yards³ Collected	1054	2471.5	134%
Number of National Builders Participating	10	17	70%
Number of Sites Collected From	28	57	103%
Number of Collections	217	108	101%
Number of Enterprises Collecting	10	19	90%

 
NCWRP gains the Social Enterprise Mark

The NCWRP has just been awarded the prestigious Social Enterprise Mark. The Mark identifies businesses that meet defined criteria for social enterprise. The Mark offers consumers an instantly recognisable logo that represents enterprises working for social and environmental aims, trading to benefit people and the planet.

For more information see: http://www.socialenterprisemark.org.uk/

Professional Photographers work with NCWRP members

A couple of months ago we sent out an appeal for professional photographers to help us out with creating some good images of Wood Recycling Enterprises at work, as it is such a useful tool for all kinds of marketing and publicity. We were delighted to be absolutely inundated with responses from photographers all over the country, generously offering their time and skills. The resulting photographs are extremely good, and will prove really useful in getting across the message of Community Wood Recycling to our customers, potential customers and beyond.

We sincerely thank the photographers who have helped so far, and look forward to working with many more in the future. Our heartfelt thanks goes to: Bob Grainger, Max von Seibold, Lisa Bailey, Edward Raydemeyer and David Houghton (examples of their work with 6 of our member wood recycling social enterprises can be seen below) THANK YOU!

Edward Rademeyer
Brighton and Hove Wood Recycling Project

Lisa Bailey
Bristol Wood Recycling Project

 
Bob Grainger
Reseiclo (Newport)

  
Max von Seibold
Oxford Wood Recycling

  
David Houghton
The Woodhouse (Preston)

 

  
Bob Grainger
Ystrad Woodstore (Powys)

August 2010

July is best month yet for our National Builders Collection Scheme (NBCS)

Fantastic news this month comes from July figures on the NBCS. It was the best month ever with a total of 1865 cubic yards or 186 tonnes of wood collected during the month. 16 NCWRP member organisations carried out collections from 16 different builders at 44 building sites - all of which are record breaking figures for the scheme. The builders that used our services the most during July were (in descending order) Kier, Breyer, Laing O’Rourke, Taylor Wimpey, Leadbitter and Rok.

June 2010

Oxford Wood Recycling has been named Overall winner of the European Social Firm of the Year 2010 by Social Firms Europe.

Oxford Wood Recycling creates jobs and training opportunities for those with disabilities and the long-term unemployed. It aims to reduce, reuse and recycle wood and timber - helping to reduce the amount of 'waste' wood currently sent to landfill. Started 5 years ago, OWR meet an environmental and social bottom line and have almost tripled their turnover in 3 years without any subsidies. Though small, they are highly effective.

Richard Snow – Chief Executive , said " We're delighted to have won this award for our staff, who own and control the business. We are a small business that sees the value in giving opportunity to people who have been out of work for a long time, often through illness. The company benefits hugely from their skills and experience, the workers benefit from worthwhile employment in an exciting environmental business, and the taxpayer benefits from savings in benefits for unemployment , disability and incapacity. We may well have beaten off some very worthy competition by showing our sustainability in being totally independent of grant funding. If David Cameron wants some ideas for the ' Big Society', we'd be pleased to show him around our warehouse at Milton Park! "

NCWRP would like to add its congratulations to Oxford Wood Recycling for winning such a fantastic award. We are really happy for you all and hope this leads on to bigger and better things, keep up the good work!

www.oxfordwoodrecycling.org.uk

NCWRP is named UK's fastest growing social enterprise

The NCWRP came out top on the recently compiled RBS SE100 fastest growing social enterprise index. We were also narrowly pipped to the post of being named the inaugural RBS SE100 growth champion at a prestigious awards ceremony in London on June 9th. We would like to congratulate Mow & Grow for deservedly winning the growth award, and also congratulate the FRC Group, and the Create Foundation for winning the impact and trailblazers awards respectively. Our congratulations also go to the other nominated social enterprises, and our thanks go to Social Enterprise magazine and the RBS as well as all the other partners and sponsors involved. But what is the RBS SE100 all about I hear you say? Read on for a quick explanation...

 

 

 

 

Reem Hamid, Sarah Lucas, and Ali Walmsley celebrate NCWRP nomination in the fastest growth section at the RBS SE100 awards ceremony at London's Garden Museum, June 9th 2010

There are currently 55,000 social enterprises in the UK with a combined turnover of £27bn, according to government figures. Impressive - yet research for the Cabinet Office revealed in 2008 that although the idea of business with a social purpose chimes well with many audiences, these statistics stand largely alone. Very few people actually know that social enterprises exist and those who do often misunderstand the concept.

Social Enterprise, the UK's only magazine dedicated to the sector, in partnership with RBS, has developed the RBS SE100 Index to forge a better understanding, within the sector and amongst the wider public, of the organisations that identify themselves as social enterprises in the UK.
Click here to read the full report
RBS SE100 website link

Other news

A big welcome to Cambridge Wood Works who opened their doors for business on 1st March and have already begun collecting from one of our big, national builders Kier. Good luck to directors David Ousby and Andy Burston and everyone else involved at Cambridge Wood Works.

Wrap/REalliance our existing funders are supporting us for a further year. They have awarded us a grant of £59,600 for 2010 – 2011 – with targets to significantly increase the tonnes of wood that we (as a network) divert from the waste stream, and to set up six additional community wood recycling enterprises. Fortunately our business plan for the year results in us being financially sustainable by March 2011, so (hopefully) we will no longer be reliant on grants.

Many congratulations to Tristan and Liz at Somerset Wood Recycling on the birth of their beautiful daughter, Roxanne. As you can see from the photo (below) she is already a keen supporter of wood recycling!











Roxanne – the smallest (certainly the cutest!) wood recycler yet!

 

In 2009 between them the network saved a whopping 5053.2 tonnes of wood from landfill. Even more impressive, over 27% of it was in the “reuse” category. Hopefully this year we should break the 8000 tonnes mark!

2009 was a record year for volunteering at the wood recycling enterprises as well - with a total of 13279 volunteer days contributed.

Members Survey

NCWRP would like to say a big thank you to all our members for completing the 2010 NCWRP survey. It follows on from a survey we published in June 2009 and so we look forward to giving you all a picture of how the network has changed over the past 12 months. It appears that most NCWRP members have made it through these recessionary times quite well, and we have also welcomed 3 new members to add weight to our collective efforts to 'upcycle' wood from the waste stream.

This year’s survey has been carried out, compiled and written up by Shaan Sahonta, a Masters student from The University of Brighton who is doing an internship with us. She has done a great job in her 3 months with us and we wish her the best of luck for the future. The completed survey will be ready to publish soon, so we hope that you will enjoy reading it, please give us any feedback about it and give us suggestions so that we can improve it for next year.

Modernisation Fund Research

With cash from The Modernisation Fund, the NCWRP commissioned research by an independent consultant into the pros and cons of how we have promoted and disseminated the community wood recycling model over the last few years.

The full report is available to any of our network members, but the upshot of it is that our decision to provide the model and high levels of support to entrepreneurs for free has been vindicated. The report praises the work of the NCWRP – calling our achievements “impressive” and says that we have inspired and supported in a manner that is unique and highly effective”.

Future Jobs Fund and the Green Jobs Partnership

NCWRP heard a few months ago that the consortium bid we had put in to the DWP to become a provider of Future Jobs Fund jobs had been successful. Our contract led by The Aspire Foundation together with the Community Recycling Network, Furniture Recycling Network and ReAlliance was to enable members of our networks to employ 90 young people on 6 months contracts with their salaries coming from the Department of Work and Pensions. A few of our members - Somerset, Oxford, St. Albans, Chiltern, Brighton -  are currently either employing staff through this scheme, or in the process of doing so, but sadly this scheme has fallen victim to the new governments cuts. However, it will be replaced by 'The Work Programme' but no details of what this will entail have been released yet.

Jan 2010

Award of £10,000 from the Modernisation Fund
We have been awarded £10,000 by the Fund which has been set up to assist “collaborative working” between not-for-profit organisations with a view “to help them develop strategies to prosper during the economic downturn”.

We will be spending the money on developing a bespoke software package to streamline the administration of the collection service our Members provide to the largest construction firms, and on researching what other services our members and new ”franchisees” would benefit from.

November 2009

Best Month Ever For the National Builders Scheme
November 2009 was the best month yet for the NCWRP and for those members that participate in the National Builders Scheme! Income from the month totalled nearly £25,000, with nearly 1500 yds³ of wood collected from 30 sites. This compares with the picture just 7 months ago in April when the scheme netted £7000 from 8 sites.

With even more of the country’s greatest builders coming on board, (we’ve recently carried out or first collections from Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Kier, Leadbitter and Mace), the scheme looks set to expand further into 2010 – saving so much more wood from the waste stream and providing our members with valuable turnover.

NCWRP – Rapidly Growing Social Enterprise
In a recent edition of the prestigious Social Enterprise magazine the NCWRP was named as the 3rd fastest growing social enterprise in the country. Our family of community wood recyclers has a turnover of more than £1,300,000! Congratulations to everyone for contributing to this milestone!

January to June 2009

New Project Opens Up!
In March the Chiltern Wood Recycling Project based in High Wycombe opened its doors for business. This further expands the coverage we can offer to our national builder clients particularly into East Berkshire and West London. Welcome and good luck to directors Ken Amass and Andy Hicks and everyone at the enterprise.

National Builders Scheme Expands
A record 7 new builders have joined the scheme with first collections from their sites taking place in the last few months. They are Beardwell Construction, Castleoak, Laing O’Rourke, Moores Furniture, Rok, Taylor Wimpey and Warings. Hopefully this is the start of long and fruitful partnerships with all of them.

NCWRP wins University of Brighton Award
In the Research and Innovation Awards 2009, the Student and Graduate award for Social Enterprise was won by the NCWRP for our work towards developing an online catalogue of recycled wood products.
The winning team consisted of Aneta Smaga (an NCWRP intern), Alasdair Walmsley (our assistant Director) and Stewart Walton (the products designer at the Hastings and Bexhill Wood Recycling Project). The award carried a prize of £2,000 which was used to fund Aneta’s work with us over the summer.

July to December 2009

NCWRP Moves to New Office
After our recent nomadic past the NCWRP has settled in August in a lovely new office in East Street, Brighton. This move should give us the room and facilities to push forward with our objectives of expanding the national builders scheme to provide more work for the wood recycling projects and actively finding entrepreneurs to expand the network of community wood recycling enterprises.

Richard Mehmed  - Eco Hero
Richard Mehmed, the founder of the NCWRP, recently featured on the Eco Hero page of the Telegraph magazine describing the setting up and development of the first wood recycling project in Brighton and the inception of the NCWRP.