Project: Charity Treecycling Scheme
Client: Treetops Hospice Care
Sector(s): Charity
Material(s): Unwanted Christmas trees
Services: Wood recycling, Skip Hire
Location: East Midlands
Contract Date: Annually December to January
Contract Value: Free of charge, supporting the llocal community

In brief…

In 2017 Treetops Hospice Care launched its first ever ‘Treecycling’ scheme to recycle unwanted Christmas trees and raise funds to provide nursing care and emotional support to adults and their families across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

Since then the scheme has gone from strength to strength with more businesses and volunteers joining each year to offer transportation, skips, stewarding and general support in collecting trees from people’s homes and places of work in return for a donation to the charity.

Growing support

During 2018 Ward and other local Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire businesses got on board with Treetops to support them with Christmas tree collections. 

Over the years more and more firms have joined in and the list now includes tree surgeons, Maple Tree Care Midlands Ltd and Canopy Tree Services, logistics specialists, The Silver X Group, security firm Repton Security Ltd, Virgin Media, landscapers and gardeners S & F maintenance services and heating specialists, Vaillant UK. Also involved are the Treetops retail warehouse team and their own army of volunteers.

Working with Ward

Always keen to support the local community, Ward has been involved in the scheme almost from the beginning. To start with many businesses and households collected trees and brought them to Ward sites, where free services were offered to process and recycle the trees.

As the scheme grew, Ward provided containers free of charge at several locations, as well as absorbing the transport charges. This helped Treetops, as they could concentrate their efforts on collecting trees and taking them to specific local spots. Skips were either exchanged during the day or collected at the end of the day. By 2019 they were collecting over 10 tonnes of trees during the week.

In 2020, and again in 2021, Ward provided larger 20 yard roll-on/offs in several locations, to expand the areas that could take part in the scheme. These containers were delivered in the morning and collected by end of the day.

The containers were used to contain Christmas trees which were being chipped by Maple Tree on site. Any left over trees were then processed at Ward’s wood recycling facility in Ilkeston. 

The skips and facilities provided by Ward and the volunteer support offered by other businesses enable the teams to offer a collection and recycling service for unwanted Christmas trees in return for a donation to the charity.

“Treecycling has been amazingly successful since it was launched. It has helped raise a record amount of money for the hospice, around £40,000 since it began. 

Without Ward’s skips and the contributions from all our volunteers from local businesses, we wouldn’t have been able to collect so many. We look forward to it every year and it’s just getting bigger and bigger.”

– Laura McWha, Corporate Partnerships Fundraiser Treetops Hospice Care

How to get involved

The intention is to bring Treecycling back each year and Treetops Hospice Care would welcome more businesses to get involved so they can continue to grow the scheme even further for the hospice. Please contact the team fundraising@treetopshospice.org.uk to express an interest.

Download PDF:

The post Treecycling scheme raises £40,000 for local hospice appeared first on Ward Recycling.

Project: Waste management for new housing developments
Client: Nationwide Housebuilder
Sector(s): Building, construction, property development
Services: Container and collection services, skips, roll-on/offs, tippers, grab hire, hazardous waste, bespoke waste reporting
Location: Nationwide
Contract Start Date: 2014
Contract Completion Date: Ongoing

In brief…

One of our national housebuilder customers has up to 20 live housing developments at any one time. During the lifetime of a project, which can span one to 10 years, any waste being generated can be costly and difficult to manage across multiple sites. To achieve the customer’s aim of increasing recycling rates, streamlining services and reducing site costs, they required a single supplier that could implement waste management best practice across their portfolio.

Managing multiple providers

Dealing with several waste brokers or skip companies directly at each of their sites was leading to inconsistency with pricing, confusion around invoicing, varying customer service levels, multiple points of contact and an inability to provide accurate waste reporting. As a business, it was difficult to report on waste reduction and recycling measures at an individual site level, so site managers weren’t able to demonstrate performance against KPIs or demonstrate environmental improvements.

‘One-stop-shop’ waste management

Ward began working with the housebuilder in 2014 to implement a ‘one-stop-shop’ waste management service. After a site visit from a dedicated account manager, each development now receives a bespoke waste management plan designed to costeffectively manage waste and improve recycling rates. Every waste strategy includes guidance on how to create a dedicated waste compound on-site, waste segregation signs and bespoke posters to educate people on site. A single point of contact is provided for all sites, ensuring consistency of pricing and excellent levels of customer service. It has also consolidated invoicing so each site has a clear breakdown of costs, billed regularly each month.

Championing waste segregation

Every possible site now implements a waste segregation system. A waste compound is set up and managed by an appointed Waste Champion who arranges appropriate containers such as skips or roll-on/offs. During the construction of each phase, container requirements change to suit the waste streams being produced, Waste Champions are responsible for ensuring each one is used to its full capacity.

Across all new build developments the average recycling figure is now consistently over 98%.

Skips are inspected before every collection to reduce air pockets and prevent cross-contamination. If not, waste disposal costs can increase due to contamination or non-compliance. If all skips are managed efficiently by the Waste Champions, this system delivers a sustainable, cost effective and environmentally-friendly solution.

Recover, reuse and recycle

Common waste streams are segregated within a compound. These are mainly wood, plasterboard, hardcore and mixed general waste. There are also options for metal, cardboard or packaging if required. Effective waste segregation, particularly with wood and metal, can reduce costs in a like-for-like container by over 24 per cent. Metals even offer a rebate, providing an income stream to counter overall waste costs.

Reporting results

Reducing waste and increasing recycling were key objectives, so we worked with Development Directors to deliver bespoke, site-level waste management reporting. These now provide a single, consistent format for capturing detailed information about recovered waste streams, recycling rates and waste costs in order to analyse waste management performance to inform best practice. The team has also introduced a reward system for the best performing development each month.

Delivering results

By working with Ward to apply best practice waste strategy principles, the customer has:

• Reduced costs by up to 24 per cent for like-for-like containers;
• Reduced administration and improved invoicing;
• Introduced bespoke site waste management reporting in a consistent format;
• Rolled out a reward scheme to incentivise best practice;
• Benefited from a dedicated account manager and single point of contact for all sites;
• Increased sustainability at site level and company-wide.

“Our partnership with Ward has helped us to improve best practice and increase recycling rates by implementing consistent on-site waste management at each of our developments. A dedicated point of contact at Ward means we can get quick responses and access help, support and guidance from a business that really understands our sector and our changing needs over the lifetime of a development project.”

Nationwide Housebuilder, Development Director

Next steps…

Ward continues to provide sustainable waste solutions across the country, helping the customer to reach their objective of reducing waste cost and improving environmental performance year-on-year.

Download PDF:

The post Embedding recycling and waste management best practice into housebuilding appeared first on Ward Recycling.