How a wood recycling social enterprise secured its future in Bristol at a time of gentrification

As well as saving resources, Bristol Wood Recycling Project was a safety net for the unemployed – but until January, it was staving off closure

Wood work: by offering volunteering hours to the unemployed, the project provides help to the most vulnerable in society, including recovering addicts and the lonely (Jim Woods)

Kaleb Debbage was only meant to be delivering a Christmas tree. But when Triodos Bank asked him if he’d like to stay and talk to staff about Bristol Wood Recycling Project, the social enterprise and co-operative that he works for, he took the opportunity to explain that the project was staving off closure.

Staff were on a desperate hunt for a new location. Their spot behind Bristol Temple Meads station had been earmarked by the council for redevelopment into a massive campus for the University of Bristol.

“This is the pickle that we are in,” he said. “So if anyone has any bright ideas, let me know.”

It turned out that Triodos, an ethical Dutch bank with UK headquarters in Bristol, was working on an idea that would be a lifeline. The hunt for a new location had been so long and gruelling that at one point the Bristol Wood Recycling Project took a vote on whether to relocate to a shipping container on a grass verge. Instead, Triodos came up with a plan to crowdfund to afford a plot where the rent was seven times as expensive as the original site – plus enough money to work towards owning it outright.

In January, the Bristol Wood Recycling Project raised £430,000 in crowdfunding from the community to buy its new city centre site in St Philip’s. Supporters paid as little as £50 for a six-year bond through Triodos with an interest rate of 4 per cent. At the end of the six years, the project plans to get a 70 per cent mortgage, giving them the security to plan for the future without fear of another eviction.

Ben Moss, a co-founder of Bristol Wood Recycling Project, said the response from the community has given them a new lease of life. He said: “Before, all we knew was that we wanted to survive, but it really wasn’t clear how we would get there. There’s something so selfless about people willing to put money in a pot to make something happen for their community. It gives me lots of hope for the future.”

Rising property prices and the redevelopment of Bristol has threatened to push out some of the city’s social enterprises. Moss said: “Social enterprises exist on marginal bits of land and at some point the property becomes valuable and people are booted out.”

At the same time as Bristol Wood Recycling Project was battling to find another site, a social enterprise called Coexist was losing its fight against rising rent in nearby Stokes Croft.

Coexist had managed an empty office block there since 2008. Hamilton House had provided cheap space for community groups and artists and supporting the rich subcultures that emerged in Stokes Croft. At the end of August, the building’s owners Conolly & Callaghan announced that they were looking for an organisation that could take on the lease at a higher rent. In December, Coexist left, saying: “C&C have co-opted our community for their own profit.”

Deborah Bryant-Pearson, a surveyor at property consultants JLL, helped Bristol Wood Recycling Project find the new site in St Philip’s pro bono as part of a company initiative to support sustainability. “It’s not restricted to social enterprises,” she said. “Demand for industrial property in Bristol city centre has outstripped supply. Most new industrial developments have been built outside the city centre, so many companies have had to think about a move outside the city when looking for premises. However, Bristol Wood Recycling Project’s customer and volunteer base is in central Bristol so it was imperative that we found a premises to suit this requirement."

Yet without these enterprises, cities lose a vital part of their culture, along with support for some of the most vulnerable in society.

Bristol Wood Recycling Project is now in its 15th year collecting and recycling wood for the city. It was started in the summer of 2003 by Moss and Nicola Padden as one of a national network of wood recycling projects working with volunteers, saving resources and generating income.

In 2017, community wood recycling projects in the UK rescued more than 20,000 tonnes of wood, nearly half of which was reused. Most of it would have otherwise been turned into woodchip or left to rot in landfill.

Bristol, which has a reputation for being a green city, seemed the perfect place for such a project. But the founders quickly discovered that there were many other social benefits. By offering volunteering hours to people out of work, Bristol Wood Recycling Project provided a safety net for some of the most vulnerable people in society.

They offered training and time to people with mental health problems, people in addiction recovery, the long term unemployed and the lonely. Moss found that working with these groups created a sense of community around the project. In 2018, the Bristol project provided more than 1,200 days of volunteer work.

Across the national network, more than 600 local unemployed people received training and work experience. Many of them were then able to find jobs.

Dan Hird, head of corporate finance at Triodos, said Bristol Wood Recycling Project is typical of the kind of community-rooted enterprises that do well in crowdfunded bond issues. The Triodos crowdfunding platform, which has been running for a year, has raised more than £20m for eight social and environmental organisations.

Already, the extra space has allowed Bristol Wood Recycling Project to take on much bigger jobs, including an order for outdoor furniture for the University of West England. “That order was a lifeline – it gave us an income, but suddenly the workshop was busy like never before,” Moss said.

The project took on Alfie Munden in 2018 to manage the workshop during the busy period. Munden had just moved to Bristol from Cornwall to work as a self-employed joiner and found that the project gave him an opportunity to meet people in his line of work in a new city. Almost a year later, he is still there working as a staff member and supporting volunteers.

One Monday afternoon, right after Bristol Wood Recycling Project got the keys for the new site, Munden reflected on how the project meant different things to different people. “Some people come here for a bit of solace, to go and stand out in the yard and do denailing, and some people come here for the social aspect,” he said.

He has noticed that some of the younger volunteers come to the project to feel like they are being useful at a time when the world feels increasingly hostile and confusing. “It’s pretty depressing environmentally at the moment. There’s not much good on the news,” he said. “You can come here and feel like you are doing something to help. For a lot of people, that’s really important.”