All our products are rubbish!

Not perhaps what you’d expect from a marketing slogan, but thanks to Prosperity Recycling, a not for profit organisation which recycles plastic, wood, paper and cardboard into saleable items, Hyndburn’s landfill is reduced by almost 8 tonnes every week.

In the true spirit of social enterprise, at the same time Prosperity provides training and employment for Hyndburn people with learning difficulties – and gives its profits back to charity.

Prosperity Recycling was the brainchild of Graham Chadwick and the Clayton Prospects Panel – one of seven in Hyndburn set up by the Prospects Foundation to try to improve the local environment.

“In Clayton-le-Moors, our main concern was Whinney Hill landfill site so we were looking for ways to reduce waste,” explains Graham. “The more we talked about it, the more we felt we could do something – and, along the way, help disadvantaged people from Hyndburn.

“We managed to get £430,000 of funding from the Single Regeneration Budget, Lancashire Environmental Fund, Hyndburn Borough Council, the European Social Fund, the European Regional Development Fund and the North West Development Agency via the Prospects Foundation and the Trinity Partnership. Prospects and Trinity – both registered charities – formed a 50:50 partnership to create Prosperity Recycling in December 2002 and each has 3 members on the board.”

Prosperity now employs 7 full time staff, has 20 trainees with learning difficulties, and operates three recycling divisions –  plastic, wood, and paper and cardboard.

Recycled plastic goes into a wide range of marketable street and outdoor furniture, fencing and decking. And, because they’re rot- and maintenance-free, vandal resistant and extremely durable, these products are going down a storm with local authorities, schools, wildlife sanctuaries, the Environment Agency, charities, housing associations and Lancashire County Council.

“We’ve had orders from as far afield as Exeter,” says Graham, now chief executive of Prosperity, “But our biggest contract so far was for New Progress, a housing association keen to support environmental projects, who ordered 700 metres of our wood composite fencing to be installed across two estates in Leyland and Bamber Bridge.”

A new range of equipment designed for adventure and activity trails is currently undergoing BS certification and will be launched shortly.

The wood division creates a range of stylish, hand-crafted products designed to attract wildlife to a garden – from bird tables to bat boxes, hedgehog homes to nut feeders – as well as planters, troughs and pergolas. These are sold directly to the public from the Charter Street premises and at Accrington market under the banner ‘all our products are rubbish’

Paper and cardboard waste is shredded and sold in bales for use as animal bedding, packaging infill or in industrial processing.

And Prosperity is prospering according to Graham. “It was quite difficult to begin with. My background is in food retail and I struggled to get to grips with the structure of manufacturing. We had to be self sustainable and that wasn’t happening.”

“We had called on Business Link early on and business advisor Hayley Huddart had helped us to plan our marketing strategy. Then when it came to manufacturing, she brought in Colin Tempest, another advisor to help us with production and costing.

“It was fantastic to have the specialist advice available,” says Graham. “And because the advisors aren’t involved in the day to day stuff, they’re in a much better position to see the overall picture and offer real practical advice and suggestions.”

For the future Graham is keen to expand so that Prosperity has its own plastics processing plant too. “That would fund more training and opportunities for Hyndburn people, and, in turn, create more money for the two charities, which in turn allows them to do more in their own fields,” adds Graham.

With any luck, Prosperity Recycling will be reducing Hyndburn’s landfill even more in the months and years to come. We wish it ... well ... prosperity!

To find out more about Prosperity Recycling, visit www.prosperityrecycling.org or call 01254 230123. For more information about setting up a business or growing an existing one, contact Business Link on 0845 600 9006 or email info@bllancs.co.uk www.businesslinklancashire.co.uk