Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more

Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more

Bristol Wood Recycling Project celebrates 20 years

Bristol Wood Recycling Project (BWRP) celebrated its 20th anniversary at the start of the summer with a party at its site in Bristol. It was a pleasure to join the celebrations and see the social enterprise thriving.

Blog

 - 26 September 2024


BWRP purchased the site with money raised through the Triodos Crowdfunding platform. The organisation had been using a ‘meanwhile’ space, intended for short-term use prior to finding a permanent location, in central Bristol, which allows for community groups or small businesses to move into vacant spaces under temporary contracts. When the lease on the meanwhile space it had been using for 13 years was ultimately deemed no longer ‘meanwhile’, the team decided they wanted to buy a site to secure the future of the organisation and reduce the uncertainty they had been facing with temporary leases. We were delighted to be able to support BWRP with a £430,000 bond offer.

The company is an example of a different way of doing business from the start, in both how it is run and what it does. It operates as a co-operative with equality and parity for workers at its core, with all staff getting paid the same and democratic decision making.

Its business model is based on reclaiming, repurposing and recycling waste wood from around the city. You can buy wood of all shapes and sizes reclaimed from businesses and building sites for your own projects, buy ready-made furniture or commission the team to build your own ideas.

As well as saving wood from waste and providing affordable wood to the community, BWRP also works to enable social inclusion. In the last 12 months, it has facilitated over 1,000 volunteer workdays. It also avoids over 500 tonnes of wood from going to waste each year.

If you are passing the Triodos head office in the build up to Christmas, you’ll see our reusable wooden Christmas tree in the window, produced for us by BWRP eight years ago.

BWRP was the first franchise based on the model created by Brighton and Hove Wood (now the Wood Store), and led the way for a network that now includes 28 social enterprises nationwide.

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