Forest Recycling Project

No one could possibly argue that the human race has attained the greatest heights when it comes to caring for the world around us, but, thankfully, we do live in a time when the environment nears the top of many government agendas (both local and national) and social enterprises and charities exist for the sole purpose of protecting the earth's resources. It wasn't always so. In the Dark Ages of the 1980s, environmentalism was not quite so en vogue and citizens and local authorities alike found it easy enough to turn blind eyes to issues of conservation and recycling.

In the spring and summer of 1989, in the London Borough of Waltham Forest (LBWF), Ian Runneckles, a disillusioned quantity surveyor and Nick Ely, an environmental studies student at the University of Hertfordshire, saw the need for change. They obtained a small grant from the Council's Economic Development Unit to see if a recycling charity was a feasible enterprise. By October of that year, Forest Recycling Project was up and running. It was LBWF's first community business and was developed with the aim of encouraging environmental awareness and creating a sustainable society through community recycling services.

Over the past 19 years, FRP has grown in size and stature: it runs several projects and receives funding from organisations including Defra, Big Lottery and the European Regional Development Fund. To deal with the workload, it employs ten paid members of staff and, in any given week, receives help from between 30 and 40 volunteers. These volunteers range from ex-offenders and the long-term unemployed, to people who are simply interested in environmental activism. In the past year, the organisation has had 144 volunteers contribute a total of 13,400 hours to its endeavours. With all the endeavours FRP has, it is easy enough to occupy the volunteers, with tasks ranging from paper- and paint-sorting to carpentry and computer refurbishment. At the moment, volunteers and paid employees work on four main projects: the Green Office Campaign, RePaint, Give or Take and FRP-REUSEiT.

The business runs its Green Office campaign across the borough and aims to make companies become more environmentally aware, through advice and environmental audits, as well as FairTrade sales and paper collection services. According to Brian Kelly, FRP Project Manager, the contact with an organisation normally begins with a brief, free environmental audit: "It's like a structured interview about what is going on. It focuses on recycling and waste, but we do look at energy and we do look at transport as well. And, out of that, if people want us to, we can work to produce an environmental policy."

Once the audit is complete, FRP offers businesses on-demand advice and points them towards organisations - usually other community recyclers - that can help them improve their environmental policies. And, if the business needs help with paper recycling, FRP itself can provide that service. Currently, FRP collects office paper from 65 local businesses that pay a small annual for FRP to take care of their waste office paper. Collected paper is taken back to the warehouse, where volunteers sort it in a social environment and then send it on to a local paper merchant, London Recycling.

FRP can also help local businesses to get rid of unwanted paint - a little-thought-of, but necessary service. An estimated 80 million litres of perfectly usable paint go unused in the UK each year. FRP is one of 70 community groups in the UK that form the Community RePaint network of paint reuse projects. Most of the paint that FRP acquires comes from local authorities that collect from the general public at Civic Amenity sites, but businesses can also offload unwanted paint for a charge of 50p per litre. After collection, the paint comes back to the FRP warehouse, where it is checked and redistributed for free, usually to community groups, charities, and individuals in need. Kelly lists the project's impressive figures: "In the last year, we've donated out just under 41,000 litres of paint. That went to 180 organisations and 550 individuals who were referred to us ... it works out to just under £200,000 worth of paint."

Since 1999, FRP has also been running "unique waste exchange events" known as Give or Take days. The functions are held about once a month at venues in North and East London and members of the public are invited to bring their unwanted items and take home someone else's, putting into practice the old truism, "one man's trash is another man's treasure". Between 100 and 250 people usually take advantage of the opportunity to exchange goods. In the process, they are exposed to community groups, local authorities, health centres and police officers that set up stalls at events to promote their projects and interests. Give or Take events usually have about two tonnes of furniture and bric-a-brac items on offer and, as the events "don't get much pure rubbish" (according to Kelly), any leftover items are taken away for storage and future use, or are placed at a stall outside FRP's offices so that passers by can take them home.

The final major project FRP is currently working on is FRP-REUSEiT, an initiative to refurbish and redistribute or recycle unwanted IT equipment. Over the past two years, FRP has taken in over 1,200 computers and donated out 650 to 79 community groups for nominal fees between £30 and £80. Anything that isn't reusable is scrapped and recycled or donated to art projects and theatre groups. A troupe, doing what Kelly terms "a period piece in terms of computers", recently called upon FRP to provide them with a difficult-to-find working computer from the 1980s.

Since the advent of the new WEEE Directive, however, FRP has found it more difficult to get hold of computers. The project was set up with a charge at both ends, so businesses had to pay to have their computers taken away, but it seems businesses are no longer willing to pay for the removal of their waste computers. Kelly explains the problems the FRP is facing: "It seems that since the WEEE Directive has come in, there are a lot more people collecting computers and a lot of organisations are really not interested in paying for them to be taken away ... And the other issue is whether it's possible to refurbish computers now with the WEEE Directive, which is interesting ... Because there's so much investment that's gone into dealing with recycling computers, maybe it'll become harder to actually refurbish and reuse them because the infrastructure's now there for recycling."

While it would be a waste to dismantle and recycle salvageable computers rather than upgrading them, should FRP be forced to shut down its computer refurbishment project, it will no doubt move on and adapt, finding other worthwhile projects, just as it has done throughout its history. According to Kelly, the company's future plans are somewhat vague at the moment, but involve establishing "the existing projects on sounder footing in terms of self-generated income" and chewing over "ideas about construction waste and reuse ... and also maybe working with food waste". It seems that no matter what happens in the recycling industry, no matter what new laws and directives come into effect, Forest Recycling Project will be able to adjust and offer whatever services are needed by its community at the time.