The Woodstore Brighton

To relieve unemployment and social exclusion by providing employment, work placements, training and volunteering opportunities for people whose social or economic circumstances mean that they are excluded from work or otherwise socially excluded - including but not limited to people recovering from mental or physical illness and people living with a disability. To preserve and protect the natural environment by recycling and re-using waste wood and wood products; and by promoting the use of sustainably-produced timber. Sustainably-produced timber is wood which comes from forests that are re-planted as they are felled ensuring that today’s forests are improved and maintained for future generations. Born in 1998, Brighton & Hove Wood Recycling was the first scheme of its kind in the country. We collect waste timber for reuse and recycling, keeping it as far up the waste hierarchy as possible. When we began, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wood was sent to landfill every year, which we thought was a terrible waste. Why not collect that unwanted wood so that it can be reused or made into useful things, creating opportunities for people to gain work experience and learn new skills at the same time. Our status as a social enterprise means that any profit we make stays within the business, enabling us to improve our facilites and conditions for our volunteers and staff. We have always had a strong focus on both environmental and financial sustainability and, apart from a small start-up grant, we operate without any financial support enabling us to be independent and do things in our own unique way.