Community Wood Recycling

Who we are

The National Community Wood Recycling Project (NCWRP) was founded in 2003 to help set up and develop a nationwide network of wood recycling social enterprises.

Modelled on the multi-award-winning Brighton & Hove Wood Recycling Project (also known as The Wood Store Brighton), the aim of these enterprises is to:

Save resources by rescuing and re-using waste timber that would otherwise be landfilled (or at very best downcycled into woodchip).
Create sustainable jobs, as well as training and volunteering opportunities, for local people – especially those who might find it difficult to get into or back to employment.
Together, the NCWRP and our member enterprises brand ourselves as Community Wood Recycling.

What we want to achieve

The NCWRP aims to see as many of these centres set up as possible and we are working hard to franchise the opportunity as widely as we can.

With so much perfectly good timber ending up in landfill and so many enthusiastic people available (and keen to work for such a worthwhile cause) we believe that the UK could support around 40 to 50 such enterprises.

If you’d like to know more about the difference we make, learn more about our impact, or if you’re interested in helping, find out more about working with us.

How we work

Our Founder/Managing Director also founded and ran the Brighton & Hove Wood Recycling Project, so we know exactly what it’s like to set up and operate such an enterprise and we relish taking a practical, very hands-on approach to the support we give. In fact, we are the experts in community wood recycling and can provide the complete package; from the very first spark of interest, right through to a successful launch, and beyond… we’re here to help.

How we are funded

The NCWRP was set up by a mixture of grants and earned income, but from 2011 we haven’t received any grant funding for our core work.  We’ve been completely financially self-supporting; generating all the income needed to meet our overheads through the modest fees we charge to support new members and to market our members’ collection service.

Our big challenge is balancing the need for us to be financially secure with the desire to keep the community wood recycling franchise that we offer as accessible (as cheap) as possible. We aim to cover our day-to-day costs commercially, but we very much appreciate donations to our development fund. The fund is used specifically to help meet the set-up costs of new enterprises – reducing the working capital required by start-up enterprises when they are most financially vulnerable. To donate to the fund please click here.

At the end of the day our aims are environmental and social – and although we need to survive – we are committed to helping virtually anyone that wants to make a contribution to environmental improvement and a more sustainable society to get involved with community wood recycling.