Network Spotlight: Bristol Wood Recycling Project
More than Twenty Years of Giving Wood and People a Second Chance
For over twenty years, Bristol Wood Recycling Project has been showing what can happen when good timber isn’t treated as waste.
As the first new enterprise established on the original Community Wood Recycling model, BWRP helped pioneer an approach that combines environmental action with social impact. Since then, the team has recycled more than 6,000 tonnes of wood, supported over 700 volunteers and become a familiar part of Bristol’s circular economy.
Every load of timber collected has the potential to become something useful again, whether it’s a bike store, a community garden project, a workshop bench, a piece of furniture or an opportunity for someone learning new skills. Over twenty years, Bristol Wood Recycling Project has grown into something that is more than a wood recycling operation. It’s now a workshop, a training space, a worker co-operative and a community resource that has helped shape Bristol’s reputation as a city that embraces practical environmental solutions.
Where Confidence Takes Shape
At the heart of Bristol Wood Recycling Project is ShedZone, a volunteer-led woodworking programme that opens the workshop door to everyone regardless of their previous experience.
Using simple workbenches and reclaimed timber, often pallet wood that many people would overlook, volunteers quickly discover that they can make something useful with their own hands. A pile of discarded timber becomes a bin store box, a planter or a bike shed. Just as importantly, people become more confident.
The project is designed to make woodworking approachable rather than intimidating. Volunteers learn practical skills, work safely with tools and solve problems together. Many arrive with little or no woodworking experience, but leave with new skills, new friendships and a sense of achievement that comes from creating something tangible.
Every finished product tells a story about wood that has been rescued, and about people discovering capabilities they never knew they had.
Making Bristol a Little Bit Better
The products made through ShedZone have a city-wide impact.
One of the team’s most popular ranges is a collection of bin stores and bike sheds made from reclaimed pallet timber. In neighbourhoods filled with terraced housing, they provide practical storage while helping to tidy up streets that might otherwise be lined with plastic bins and recycling containers.
They’re also built to outlast the commercial competition.
By turning reclaimed timber into attractive, durable products, BWRP helps show that reuse isn’t about making do with second best. It’s about getting more value from resources while creating something genuinely useful.
Wood for the Community
The impact of Bristol Wood Recycling Project reaches far beyond its customer base.
Through a community timber scheme, charities, schools and community groups can access reclaimed wood at reduced prices, helping them make limited budgets go further.
The timber has found its way into allotments, community gardens, growing projects and outdoor learning spaces across the city. Schools and Scout groups are often offered offcuts free of charge for creative projects, while even the smallest pieces of timber are given a chance to be useful. Short pallet posts, for example, are sold at bargain prices, ensuring that as much material as possible stays in circulation.
It’s an approach that reflects the project’s wider philosophy: if something still has value, find a way to use it.
Bristol Wood in Unexpected Places
One of the joys of working with reclaimed wood is never quite knowing where it will end up next.
Over the years, timber from BWRP has been transformed into treehouses, furniture, allotment structures, raised beds and community installations. It has even appeared in award-winning show gardens, contributing to Gold medal-winning exhibits at both RHS Malvern and RHS Badminton.
Every piece starts the same way: rescued from the waste stream. What happens next depends entirely on the imagination of the people who use it.
Derek’s Story
Finding Purpose Through Practical Work and Community
Derek began volunteering with Bristol Wood Recycling Project in 2025. It was a search for reclaimed floorboards when renovating his home that led him to the project, fired by his interest in low waste. His visit turned out to be about more than sourcing materials. A sign about volunteering caught his eye, and he decided to give it a go.
A Way Back Into Activity and Connection
At the time, volunteering offered something he hadn’t fully realised he needed.
“I’d retired a year or so after my wife died. I’d rather lost interest in work,” he says. “My son is grown up but has mental health challenges, and I found I needed to get out of the house a bit.”
The opportunity to do something practical, structured and useful made an immediate difference.
“The idea of coming here, playing with wood, doing something physical – that appealed enormously.”
With a background in DIY and some experience helping out in a joinery workshop, he quickly settled in and completed his induction.
Creating Routine
A year on, volunteering has become a regular part of his week.
“I’m averaging about a day a week now, and I’m really pleased to have become a member.”
Bereavement and supporting an adult child with their mental health challenges can be isolating, especially as Derek is a relative newcomer to Bristol,
“I enjoy the activity itself, but I also really enjoy the range of people involved,” he says. “And I admire the cooperative structure. Having worked in industry all my life, this is very different.”
Twenty Years Young
In 2025 year Bristol Wood Recycling Project celebrated its twentieth anniversary, marking two decades of pioneering a different way of doing business.
Co-founder Ben Moss reflected:
“We can’t quite believe we’ve made it to this significant milestone! What started off as a good idea has flourished in to cultural landmark in our city, the kind of ‘green enterprise’ that people associate Bristol with.
From starting off as outliers, we now hold a middle ground of practices that define a positive way of doing things – reusing and reclaiming, working as a co-operative, having strong social and environmental objectives, equality and parity in the workplace (we all get paid the same wage) – we are putting into practice what others know to be the way the future should look.
And although we have been running for 20 years, we feel young – and our ideas for how we can continue feel as fresh and as vibrant as they ever did. We’re looking forward to what the next twenty years might hold, as our way of doing things becomes ever more important in these times of great change.”
Richard Mehmed, founder of Community Wood Recycling, said:
“I remember the early days of the Bristol Wood Recycling Project, helping to set up the first few wood racks in the pouring rain. Thank goodness for the positive attitude of Ben and his volunteers! They turned an initially daunting plan into an exciting project which has had a national impact. BWRP has truly helped to blaze a trail for sustainability, pioneering a greener way of doing things during an era when environmental concerns were largely ignored”.
Want to get involved?
There are all kinds of ways to support our work while getting a great deal. If you work at a business which creates a lot of wood waste, you can use our wood waste collection service. If you’re interested in timber, wooden products, or volunteering, get in touch with your local enterprise to find out more.