April 2024

Dozens more men set to be supported by Recycling Lives Charity’s rehabilitation work

We have expanded our prisons programme, opening a second workshop in Kirkham men’s prison.

The new workshop will support up to 20 more men at a time, offering opportunities for participants to develop skills and receive support in a bid to reduce reoffending rates.

HMP Kirkham is already home to our longest running recycling workshop, opened back in 2012. More than 2.4 million waste electricals have been processed in the prison over the years, including around 1.6m FPD (flat panel) TVs and 626,000 CRT TVs and screens.

Now the new workshop will process tens of thousands more items, with its team expected to dismantle around 10,000 units every month. This work will allow participants to develop transferable work skills while earning an enhanced wage and receiving wrap-around support to secure stable housing and decent work ready for release.

The workshop is being opened in partnership with Recycling Lives Services. The recycling business is a long-standing partner of our Charity and Social Enterprise, already supporting the operations of our six other prison- and community-based workshops as well as offering in-kind support to our residential facility and Training Kitchen and donating to support the delivery of our Food Redistribution Centre.

Alasdair Jackson OBE, CEO of Recycling Lives Charity & Social Enterprise (RLSE), said: “Opening extra workshops has been our ambition for many years, so we’re really excited to be opening this second site in HMP Kirkham. Running our own workshops in prisons is key to our impact, giving us day-to-day contact with participants to offer intensive support which leads to unrivalled results for reducing reoffending rates. Recycling Lives Services are long-standing supporters of every element of our work and are foundational to our work in prisons.”

We currently work in 12 prisons across the North West, North Wales, Yorkshire and Midlands, running our own recycling workshops within six of these, and within one community-based workshop. Additionally, we work alongside prison-led workshops in the six other prisons, offering our wrap-around support as a bolt-on for participants.

We last year supported around 130 people every month through our rehabilitation programmes, seeing fewer than 10% of participants reoffend or return to prison, while more than 70% of eligible participants moved into employment following release.

Adrian Murphy, CEO of Recycling Lives Services, added: “As we are expanding our business, we want to use recycling as a force for good and RLSE is key to helping us achieve this. As well as delivering amazing outcomes for the people they support, they also understand business goals and work flexibly and efficiently to support their commercial partners too. We’re proud to be expanding our partnership with them in this way and look forward to hearing about the lives that will be changed for the better.”

Recycling Lives Services delivers total waste management solutions for commercial waste streams, handling waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE), batteries and packaging compliance.