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Green-Works is an award winning social enterprise and registered charity dedicated to helping the environment by diverting redundant office and school furniture from landfill by providing reused and remanufactured furniture to small business, charities, schools and community groups whilst providing training and real work experience to the unemployed.

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Paul Drechsler talks about making closer ties with Social Enterprises

4 March 2011

Article on Supply Management Website - CEO of Wates talks about the need to be inclusive with able social enterprises

Construction firm to bring more social enterprise into supply chain

Green-Works worker © Green-works Charity and social enterprise Green-Works aims to recycle redundant office furniture, diverting it from landfill © Green-works

3 March 2011 | Angeline Albert 

Wates aims to use a social enterprise on all of its future construction projects by building them into its supply chain, as well as offering contracts directly.

Speaking at an event in London yesterday, Wates CEO Paul Drechsler said procurement departments should tap into the long-term value social enterprise businesses can bring. "Companies need to show greater leadership by working with their clients and suppliers to encourage them to incorporate social enterprises within their own supply networks," he said.  

For the past year it has been trying to incorporate social enterprises into its supply chain to "create a lasting legacy in the communities it works in", taking the lead from the prime minister's ‘Big Society'.

One of these, a charity called Green-Works, hires long-term unemployed and homeless people to remove unwanted office furniture from its sites and reuse it elsewhere - either by Wates or another organisation - effectively reducing landfill.

Drechsler suggested buyers follow the group's example by splitting work into smaller contracts to make it easier for social enterprises to bid. He said they should also use social enterprises to fill "potential gaps in the supply chain" and encourage them to become members of a consortia.                           

By showing flexibility in its procurement, Drechsler said, Wates had been able to offer work to social enterprises as both direct suppliers and as sub-contractors to other vendors. He said strategic suppliers are happy to allow a small portion of a project to be undertaken by a social enterprise if it helps them win business. In 2010, Wates used 38 of these organisations in 60 different projects - about 10 per cent of its work.

Despite the recession, social enterprises saw strong growth in 2010 with a 56 per cent rise in turnover from the previous year compared to 28 per cent for SMEs.

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Green-Works Facts

Green-Works celebrated its 10th birthday in 2010

We were the first to recognise the scale of the commerical furniutre problem with towards 500,000 tonnes of commercial furniture being dumped in landfill every year by companies

Green-Works has helped over 5,500 charities and organisations providing low cost furniture

We have donated over 70 jam packed containers of valauable educational and office furniture across the developing world

Our volunteers programme has save the state over £500K in social benefit

We have 5 proceesing centres across the UK which combined offer over 100,000 sq ft of capacity to deal with unwanted items

Green-Works was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise - Sustainable Development 2008