Case Studies

Vital Statistics:

Project: Charity Treecycling Scheme
Client: Treetops Hospice Care
Sector(s): Charity
Material(s): Unwanted Christmas trees
Services: Wood recycling, Skip Hire
Location: East Midlands
Contract Date: Annually December to January
Contract Value: Free of charge, supporting the llocal community

In brief…

In 2017 Treetops Hospice Care launched its first ever ‘Treecycling’ scheme to recycle unwanted Christmas trees and raise funds to provide nursing care and emotional support to adults and their families across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

Since then the scheme has gone from strength to strength with more businesses and volunteers joining each year to offer transportation, skips, stewarding and general support in collecting trees from people’s homes and places of work in return for a donation to the charity.

Growing support

During 2018 Ward and other local Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire businesses got on board with Treetops to support them with Christmas tree collections. 

Over the years more and more firms have joined in and the list now includes tree surgeons, Maple Tree Care Midlands Ltd and Canopy Tree Services, logistics specialists, The Silver X Group, security firm Repton Security Ltd, Virgin Media, landscapers and gardeners S & F maintenance services and heating specialists, Vaillant UK. Also involved are the Treetops retail warehouse team and their own army of volunteers.

Working with Ward

Always keen to support the local community, Ward has been involved in the scheme almost from the beginning. To start with many businesses and households collected trees and brought them to Ward sites, where free services were offered to process and recycle the trees.

As the scheme grew, Ward provided containers free of charge at several locations, as well as absorbing the transport charges. This helped Treetops, as they could concentrate their efforts on collecting trees and taking them to specific local spots. Skips were either exchanged during the day or collected at the end of the day. By 2019 they were collecting over 10 tonnes of trees during the week.

In 2020, and again in 2021, Ward provided larger 20 yard roll-on/offs in several locations, to expand the areas that could take part in the scheme. These containers were delivered in the morning and collected by end of the day.

The containers were used to contain Christmas trees which were being chipped by Maple Tree on site. Any left over trees were then processed at Ward’s wood recycling facility in Ilkeston. 

The skips and facilities provided by Ward and the volunteer support offered by other businesses enable the teams to offer a collection and recycling service for unwanted Christmas trees in return for a donation to the charity.

“Treecycling has been amazingly successful since it was launched. It has helped raise a record amount of money for the hospice, around £40,000 since it began. 

Without Ward’s skips and the contributions from all our volunteers from local businesses, we wouldn’t have been able to collect so many. We look forward to it every year and it’s just getting bigger and bigger.”

– Laura McWha, Corporate Partnerships Fundraiser Treetops Hospice Care

How to get involved

The intention is to bring Treecycling back each year and Treetops Hospice Care would welcome more businesses to get involved so they can continue to grow the scheme even further for the hospice. Please contact the team [email protected] to express an interest.

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