We’re delighted to announce an exciting new partnership between Kenny Waste Management and the Woodland Trust. Our Technical Director and Driving Change leader, Paul Eagleton, met with Chris Waterfield from the Woodland Trust earlier this month. They’ve come up with partnership plans which benefit the charity and a local community – while offsetting carbon emissions.
The Woodland Trust and Smithills Estate
The Woodland Trust is a woodland conservation charity, with the aim of protecting the UK’s woods for wildlife to thrive in and people to enjoy. We met Chris at Smithills Estate near Bolton, which the Trust has been acquiring piece-by-piece since 2015. At almost 1,170 acres, it’s the largest site the Trust has acquired, is open to the public, and is best-known for being the home of the Winter Hill TV mast.
The estate is now also the HQ of The Smithills Enterprise Hub. This works towards growing a community at Smithills made up from estate tenants, current enterprises and new on-site businesses, all of whom will benefit from each other. The Smithills enterprises will also work with the wider community to encourage local economic growth.
About the Antz
We met Chris through Antz, a body that brings businesses and third sector organisations together to deliver social change in their local community.
As part of our Driving Change social enterprise programme, we’ve become members of the Antz Network, which has a Greater Manchester branch. We were introduced to Chris at one of Antz’s networking events. The Woodland Trust team at Smithills needed some help with estate maintenance – and that’s where Kenny Waste Management comes in…
How we’re working with the Woodland Trust
Kenny Waste Management is going to supply The Woodland Trust at Smithills with two 14-yard lockable skips, which we’ll exchange every 28 days.
These will be our own new Manchester-made skips, at a cost to us of £3,000. The skips will be filled by teams of volunteer groups organised by the Woodland Trust, who will collect the rubbish left by visitors to the estate. We’ll remove the skips, and sort and recycle the waste at our Material Recycling Facility in Worsley.
But that’s not the end of our new partnership agreement – this is the really creative part. We’ll be sending some of our green waste across to Smithills. The estate will receive the tree stumps, root balls and big branches that we’ve sorted, and hand them over to Smithills’ wood sculptor, Richard Goodwin. We cut our green waste recycling bill, and Richard gets the materials he needs for his astonishing works of art. We’re looking forward to seeing what he makes from this waste!
How we’ll use our savings
Both sides will make savings: the Woodland Trust gets a free waste management service, and we’ll reduce our green waste expenditure by around £1,200 pa.
This joint reserve will become a “savings pot”, ring-fenced for tree planting. Developing new woodlands is a major part of the Trust’s mission, and we’re delighted to be involved with helping to create future outdoor spaces for the community.
There’s another major saving: carbon saving. Through photosynthesis, trees take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and store it as carbon, usually for a long time. This is called “carbon sequestration”; and because the trees we plant will sequester carbon, we’re reducing our carbon footprint.
How our carbon saving benefits Kenny Waste Management customers
We’re working hard to offset the carbon we produce as a company, and so are most of our clients. By working with Kenny Waste Management, our clients in turn reduce their own carbon use because they engage a supplier (us) that has made carbon savings.
If you want to find out more about our charity and community work, please contact our Driving Change team on paul@kennywastemanagement.co.uk.
And we thoroughly recommend the beautiful estate at Smithills for a country walk!
