Another trip to Somerset Wood Recycling!
As part of our continuing research into our wood recycling project, me, Harry and Dobbie made another trip down to the Somerset Wood Recycling centre in Weston Super-Mare. This time with the intention of spending the day there and getting more of a feel of how the place runs on a day to day basis.
We arrived early albeit getting slightly lost along the way (I blame bad directions from Harry…) and got stuck in. We were given a quick tour of the space and the workshop, introduced to some volunteers and then challenged to make something out of a large slab of wood that they had. The really laid back atmosphere of the place was really inspiring, they pretty much gave us free reign of the workshop with people available to help if we needed anything.
Later on in the day me and Harry went out in the truck on a collection. It was really interesting seeing how it all works. We visited a local concrete mixing firm that use a huge amount of wood weekly to create moulds. SWR visit their site roughly once a week and collect anything that they have put aside. It’s regular arrangements with businesses like this that account for the most of the wood collections.They charge per square yard of wood on stuff that isn’t immediately sellable at a price cheaper than landfill, and anything that is really useful they will take away for free.
When we returned we sat down with Triss, one of the founders of the project. He gave us a huge amount of information and advice, things that worked, things that he would’ve done differently and provided us with a bunch of documents and information that would be helpful to us. For me, hearing that they felt very much in the same boat when they started (described as one man in a warehouse with a big pile of wood) was really encouraging
On the way back, we got lost again. Even more lost than on the way. I blame Dobbie for that one…
Our next step is to turn all this talk into actual reality. We are hoping to send off a bunch of funding applications before the new year so we can secure the physical things that make our startup possible. Things like a truck to collect wood with and a space to do it in.
Also, to try and build up interest from people and businesses in the community, relationships with people that get through wood on a regular basis and people that would want to volunteer or use the services that we hope to provide.
Please pass the message on to anyone that you think might be interested!
My email is : ben@edventurefrome.org
My phone number is : 07907269228