The Recycling Lives POD
Each Recycling Lives (RL) centre is equipped with a range of facilities to be used by a wide variety of activities. Each centre includes space for residential accommodation; office accommodation: retail and space for industrial operations and training.
Residential (1,017 Square Metres – 10,947 Square Feet)
The residential accommodation is used for the benefit of the residents that are the backbone of the RL concept. People who have found themselves marginalised for a variety of reasons will occupy this space and ‘sign up’ to the spirit of RL through whom they will pave the way to a new start in life for themselves. The accomodation for each of the residents benifits from a private ensuite and W.C. facilities in addition to a range of social interaction platforms such as television and Internet access.
Additional facilities are supplied throughout the RL centre accommodation floors to ensure that residents have every opportunity to improve on their life skills and social integration. Preparation for female residents also incorporates secure environment for both themselves and their dependants, ensuring a safe environment and an opportunity to break the chains of uncertainty and poverty.
Office (1,050 Square Metres – 11,302 Square Feet)
The RL concept is self sustaining and viable through a number of activities. The primary objective of our own skills programme is to develop residents in order that they may maintain full time employment in the Recycling sector, even after the leave the RL centre and enter the housing stream.
However, there are also a number of other revenue generators, rented office space for rental income being one of them. Each RL centre boasts over 1000 square metres of office space, for use as new business incubator units or general office space. Whilst not exclusive, an effort will always be taken to ensure that priority will be given to entities that are related to the RL sectors.
It is our ambition to embrace local entrepreneurs and educate them of the benefits of social enterprise, to both their business and the wider community. The space allocated for incubator units will be slightly discounted for companies that embracing corporate social responsibility; in addition to providing opportunity to residents for new vocational training and activities.
Advanced communications systems running between each RL centre will ensure maximum efficiency and in every region an element of space will be set aside for internal use by RL staff.
Retail (318 Square Metres – 3,429 Square Feet)
The ‘Recycling Loop’ is not closed until a product is manufactured from the recycled waste or recyclet. RL have a number of manufacturing applications in the pipeline from artistic glass work to products to be used within the construction industry and each centre will showcase and retail them. The retail space will be split into a product sales area and a café area, which has been included in order to generate additional income from the local community. These facilities provide further opportunity for resident training will help to breakdown the profile of homelessness within the minds of the local community.
Industrial (1,029 Square Metres – 11,076 Square Feet)
Recycling is a key element to our viability and success; we have decades of experience in recycling and have numerous business models that will be intergrated into the network of developing RL centres. The industrial space will be used for training residents and operating the primary recycling activity allocated to the centre.
In addition to the primary role carried out at the centre, a number of ‘generic’ activities have been identified, all of which are viable and part of the recycling family of activities, For example, accepting domestic metal waste, WEEE, CRT’s.
The POD (Five RL centres working in harmony)
The ethos behind Recycling Lives is to provide people in need housing and training for long term employment. The residents come to RL from a variety of sources and we have identified certain levels of frequency such as people who are ex-armed forces and offenders on probation. Looking at the cross section of people that will use RL we clearly need to offer a range of opportunities to suit a variety of characteristics.
Some residents will prefer to work outside and for these people we will allocate activities such as; cleansing, recycled waste collection, graffiti removal, horticulture and parks maintenance and much more. Skill levels vary from emptying boxes of recyclable waste to team management. One of the primary objectives of the external resident’s team will be to educate the public with regards to recycling and to assist in the collection process.
Other residents prefer to remain indoors, and for these people we have developed a range of warehouse and office based activities to assist the RL model and recycling within the region. Again activities vary in skill levels from separating labels from plastic bottles to operating machinery and computer equipment.
The more centres that RL operate in a particular region, the more products we can collect to recycle, and ultimately the more viable the model becomes. More importantly, if more RL centres exist in close proximity within a region, there is a benefit in reducing CO2 emissions with reduced vehicle activity between each centre. Subsequently, each recyclable i.e. glass can be collected from around multiple RL centres in a region, taken to one centre for processing and re-manufacturing, before being used as a product in the area from which the waste was collected.
Through our experience we have identified a number of recycling and related activities that will be carried out at ‘every’ RL centre. In addition to these ‘default activities’ each centre will operate a primary activity for the region in which it is located.
We currently have five primary activities;
- CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) dismantling and processing;
- ELV (End of Life for Vehicles) and associated activities;
- Metal and WEEE Processing;
- Glass Processing;
- Construction Training & Recycled Products Builders Merchants;
The five centres within a region will make up a ‘Pod’. The Pod is the point at which RL hits optimum performance for a region, although further centres will enhance the RL model both in terms of financial viability and job opportunities for residents.
By creating the synergy of a Pod in a region, RL can look forward to rapid UK expansion, whilst maintaining structure and organised logistics. Clearly we hope that RL will continue to expand to a point where regional Pod’s will eventually meet and interact.
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