VAT increases, prices remain the same - January 1, 2010 Despite VAT returning back to 17.5% today and many manufacturers implementing price increases from today we have kept the pricing for all but three products the same as 2009. We worked through New Year's night individually changing the pricing on all 250 plus product lines so that customers would be paying the same for most products today as they were yesterday.
Best wishes for a fantastic 2010 from all of us here at Home Recycling
About this time every year our open plan office starts getting a bit cold. It's fine if we're moving around packing bins but sat down doing office work is a bit uncomfortable. It would be financial as well as environmental madness to heat the whole building so we move into our specially made yurt.
We don't need to heat the yurt - computers and people keep it warm. So warm in fact that we have to take the green canvas roof off most afternoons to let some heat out. Our shiny new Mac looks and works wonderfully but as all the workings are in the keyboard and monitor we rely on the PCs to keep our feet warm!
Exhibition Season ending. Visit us! - September, 2009
We are coming to the end of the recycling exhibition season and it's been a bit disappointing in the UK this year. I haven't noticed any new recycling containers if you discount prototype variations of existing product. Some of our customers have said how good they thought the shows were so maybe we're just frustrated as we recognise that really we should have been demonstrating. We have a few problems with exhibiting though:
1) Our range is so large that if we were to display anywhere near the variety of stock we would have to pay £60,000 for each show.
2) Obviously the answer would be to display only a few bins but even then none of us are particularly salesy and I haven't worn a suit since I got married. Besides range and service our are main strengths along with price and we can't demonstrate any of these at a show stand.
3) There aren't enough of us to dedicate three people on what would have to be the biggest stand at every show for three days. Three of us spent a rushed few hours in the morning at the Recycling and Waste Management exhibition at the NEC in September and our skeleton crew had to deal with three large deliveries by themselves.
The answer seems to be invite you to visit us. We have excellent links with the M62 and are only 6 minutes walk from Sowerby Bridge train station which is on the Leeds-Manchester line. We appreciate that we're not conveniently placed for everyone but we do have more recycling container solutions than can be seen anywhere else - even a recycling show. It will also give you the opportunity to see how we're able to offer next working day delivery. We are also really well served with plenty of reasonably priced places to eat and drink.
So, if you still haven't found what you're looking for please get in touch by email at sales@workplacerecycling.com or phone 08456 123-191 and arrange to see what we have to offer.
Local press. World coverage - June, 2009
Although everything he said and wore makes Chris cringe we were lucky to get three articles published about us in local papers in June. Unsurprisingly we saw a rise in retail sales in the North East of England. What was surprising and probably unconnected is that we saw a rise in commercial export orders in the same month sending orders out to countries in Northern Europe and the Middle East including Norway, Denmark, Qatar and Lebanon.
The egg has landed! - 28th May, 2009
We have been wanting to get the Ovetto recycling bin into stock for months and at last they have arrived. The bins are rotatable, have three compartments and three sprung flaps. The lid even pulls up to reveal a surprisingly effective plastic bottle crusher.
Fun and stylish, made from recycled plastic and available in all white, all black or with coloured doors and flaps they are already our favourite bin.
Workplacerecycling.com - March, 2009
Here at Home Recycling we’re working on an exciting new project – workplacerecycling.com - where we will offer a wide range of recycling products, services, and pricing structures aimed specifically at workplace environments such as your Office, Factory, School or University.
We are increasingly selling to business, government and educational institutions, despite the fact that traditionally we have concentrated on the retail market and have priced our products individually and inclusive of VAT.
Not only do we stock the largest range of recycling bins for the home we also have the largest range of recycle bins for the workplace and we needed a new website to allow customers an easy way of navigating through the choices available.
It was always our intention to encourage recycling at home in the hope that this would translate to increased recycling in the workplace. After 5 years we are now in a position to offer the non domestic sector the tools they need to recycle efficiently.
Please look out for further details of our official workplacerecycling.com website launch and remember that homerecycling.co.uk continues to stock the UK’s widest range of can crushers, recycling bins, and other recycle containers, making recycling in the home easier.
Despite the weather there was a good turnout for the visit of Prince Charles on Monday 24th November. The Prince has a particular interest in the canal basin that we overlook due to the unique collection of canal side warehouses and the regeneration work that was started more than a decade ago by the Prince himself.
I was really chuffed when we got an order from Stacey Joly a couple of weeks ago. I'm a regular reader of husband Dom's writing in the Independent where he often mentions Stacey and, of course, a big fan of his comedy tv work. I was really delighted however when Stacey took the time to write to us to let us know that their double recycling cabinet had helped in getting "almost" the whole family recycling!
Our warehouse has never been more full. Receiving 4 shipping containers over 6 weeks has meant our having to store items more efficiently and that even the largest of bulk orders can be despatched same day for next working day delivery.
Although we still have our shipping containers in the North East, with new ranges being introduced in the next few months it looks like we will have to look for more storage space.
Our open-plan office is in the warehouse which gets really cold in winter. Last winter it didn't matter so much because there were only two of us so we kept warm by packing orders. Now there are six of us it really is too cold to be sat in the open in front of a computer so we've had a yurt installed.
A lattice framed tent traditionally used by nomads in Central Asia our yurt is made from sustainably forested ash in the West Country, insulated with layered foil insulation between two thick canvas skins and keeps us warm when we're doing admin work or just having a break.
I was really chuffed when Nick Hodgson from the Kaiser Chiefs ordered a Brabantia twin bin online from us last year. It took 14 months and a Channel 4 schools programme on advertising for me to think that it might be a good idea to email him and ask whether he would mind if we mentioned he bought a recycling bin from us. Within half an hour of me emailing he emailed back to say he absolutely wouldn't mind and that he was overjoyed with the bin.
The Kaiser Chiefs are in the middle of a 20 date, 10 country tour and for Nick to find time to recycle is great (I know people who have time to watch Eastenders and Coronation Street but don't have time to recycle) but to find time to write to us within an hour of taking to the stage in Austria is awesome. I was a fan of the music before but now I'm a fan of the man too.
Environmental Business of the Year Nomination - October 22, 2007
Great to get nominated in our local paper's Business Awards on Monday. We're down to the last three in the Environmental Business of the Year section and up against big local firms Marshalls and Interfaceflor who are doing great things. Interfaceflor is a customer so we're know they're okay!
We break (our) record for emptying truck - September 18, 2007
We try and reduce the environmental and financial cost of transport by bringing in product by full 40' trucks direct from maufacturing plants. It has always taken over an hour for us to strip a full container but, with a slight reorganisation of staff, the six of us managed to empty our latest truckload and have all products stacked up in the warehouse in 42 minutes.
Our bins appear on tv - August 21, 2007
After successfully appearing on BBC's No Waste Like Home and Anthea Turner's Perfect Housewife last year we donated some of our recycling bins to new BBC3 series Outrageous Wasters. Bins shown include 100 litre wheelie bins and the Stack of 3 Recycling Containers.
We get new boxes - August 3, 2007
I know it might not seem very exciting to anyone else and, maybe, we should get out more but we have new cardboard boxes!
The boxes are still double walled for strength and good enough to reuse - they would cost about £5.00 if you were to buy them in small quantities to move house or office. Now they have our own artwork on.
The good news is that this means we don't have to use our branded vinyl tape anymore. While vinyl is more environmentally friendly than standard polypropylene tape the brown paper tape we now use is better still and can be composted along with the box if you can't reuse it. Cardboard is great in compost bins or heaps especially if you tend to generate a lot of kitchen scraps or grass clippings.
Warehouse Badminton - August 1, 2007
Chris H, Chris B, Simon and Tim take advantage of a lull in an otherwise great sales week to have a game of badminton in the warehouse. The court's days were numbered however as 1,000 cardboard boxes were to arrive the following day and three shipping containers worth of stock are due the week after.
Mentions in the Independent - 2007
August 2007
50 Best ETHICAL HOMEWARES
The Independent - March 2007
Julia Stephenson: The Green Goddess
Some of you may remember this newspaper's charity auction before Christmas, in which readers could bid for the company and services of Indy writers. I was one of the lots - offering a green home audit to the highest bidder - and I was worried no one would bid for me.
Indeed, as I languished behind and other lots raced ahead, I considered bidding for the agony aunt Virginia Ironside to discuss my worries, but she soon escalated out of my price range. In desperation, I asked my father to bid for me. "I'd bid a grand for you not to green me up," he grumbled. But he forgot, so it was left to fate to decide.
Fortunately, a charitable benefactor stepped in with a generous sum. So I duly travelled to the frozen North to green up Chris Hasling, who sells a vast range of recycling bins and other products from his converted chapel in Hebden Bridge.
He sounded pretty green already, and I feared that my visit would be like teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, so I begged S, a builder, to accompany me with a chainsaw. If I wasn't delivering value, perhaps he could knock something down or put something up.
As I suspected, Chris's outfit was pretty green. His stunning Victorian chapel was huge - and absolutely freezing. There was no central heating, which is very eco-friendly, and as nobody in the North feels the cold, appeared to be no hardship.
Although my bones were so cold I could barely move (I'm from Guildford), I was impressed by Chris's recycling bins. My father makes wastepaper tubs, so I know a bit about bins, and these were the sine qua non of bins.
I quite wore myself out with eco-solutions, but whatever I suggested, Chris had already done. Fortunately, I discovered that the deepfreeze wasn't full. A deepfreeze uses less energy if it's full, so if yours is half-empty, fill it with scrunched-up plastic bags or something, to reduce energy consumption.
Ferreting in my bag, I found some old crisp packets and started shoving them into Chris's deepfreeze. "What a great idea, let's go to the pub!" he cried, wresting my bag from me. S put his chainsaw down and we dashed up and down dales to the best pub in Hebden Bridge, and had a slap-up lunch.
"There's more to Hebden Bridge than lesbians, you know," said Chris, as he filled us in on local colour. The whole lesbian thing was news to me, but it's no surprise as the town is very environmentally aware. With the world's population at six billion, a sure-fire way for us all to halt the planet's demand for energy is to go gay. Or, if that is too drastic, take a leaf out the books of the denizens of Hebden Bridge and turn off our heating. Brrrrr.
www.homerecycling.co.uk
j.stephenson@ independent.co.uk
Mention in The Guardian - July 2007
That's it!
We actually started back in 2004 but it took us a while to realise that maybe reporting our news might be of interest.
