Crow Recycling impact report January to December 2025 

Foreword by Bill Smith, chairman of trustees 

This was the year we celebrated our 40^th anniversary. We looked back to the early days when Crow was based at the Barras Heath Wholesale Market and ahead to the development of our new activities in horticultural and cookery. 

Our new cookery project sees our volunteers using produce from the garden to cook healthy dishes in the Crow kitchen. Both the cookery and the horticulture are funded by the National Lottery’s Awards for All. 

Meanwhile our core activities of paper and can recycling and our Scrapstore are going strong. 

Throughout 2025 as well as the 40 years we have been going it is our volunteers, customers and funders who have kept us going. This is a good time to say thank you to them all. 

Crow Recycling Theory of Change 

Inputs	Outputs	Outcomes	Impact
Funding	Provision of volunteering opportunities for disabled adults	Learning new skills eg operating machinery, manual handling and materials sorting	Improved well being
Time and expertise from volunteer trustees	Provision of work experience for teenagers with special needs	Experience the social aspects of the work place such as Christmas parties and break time chats	Stronger college applications for secondary school pupils and job applications for college students
		Learning to take some of the responsibilities of the work place eg wearing of safety boots while volunteering in the warehouse	Ability to move to more demanding placements
	Providing a Scrapstore selling reused art and craft materials	Craft materials available at a reasonable price	Less waste incinerated or sent to landfill and crafts are more affordable
	Providing craft  workshops	Tackling isolation both at the workshops and chatting to customers during the week	Less social isolation

Crow Recycling mission statement 

To provide quality training, tuition and work experience in a supportive environment for people with disabilities, learning difficulties, disadvantage and who are long term unemployed. To enable them to fully develop and realise their personal potential. 

Facts and figures 

In 2025 we had 30 service users and 6 volunteers. 

Our service users did a total 2423 hours of placements between them, some coming full time for short placements and others once or twice a week over a longer period. 

We provided 2,058 hours of general placements, 299 hours of school work experience placements and 66 hours of placements for people in alternative provision. 

Our volunteers did 1740 hours of volunteering between them varying from administration in the office to supervising service users and sorting donations and serving in the Scrapstore. 

We hosted 11 educational visits to the warehouse. Three were special schools, one was made up of special needs pupils from a mainstream school, two were mainstream schools, two were colleges and three were from the local adult education service. We sent a staff member out to visit one special school for pupils who would find visiting the warehouse difficult. 

What our service users say 

We asked our service users to fill in a questionnaire about the impact volunteering at Crow has on them. Seven out of the eight people said they either agreed or agreed strongly that they had learnt something new while volunteering at Crow. The other one neither agreed or disagreed. All eight agreed or agreed strongly that they like being with the people they meet at Crow. Seven out of the eight either agreed or agreed strongly that they feel they are doing something useful when they volunteer at Crow. Seven out eight agreed or agreed strongly that they were looking forward to volunteering at Crow in 2026 and one neither disagreed nor agreed. Seven out of eight either agreed or agreed strongly that they like volunteering at Crow. One neither agreed nor disagreed, 

Comments included: “It’s wonderful”, “It’s OK”, “Very good”, “I like coming here it’s good for me”, “I like the people I work with” and “I think it’s good and I like shredding”,  

The schools and adult education providers we work with are positive that our placements help people make stronger job and college applications, learn new skills and take on some of the responsibilities of the work place. 

What the experts say 

Our experience at Crow Recycling has shown us that learning something new, social contact and a sense of purpose all boost wellbeing. This is supported by experts in various fields. 

NHS advice links learning new skills with mental health and well being here 

Research reported by Psychology Today magazine links a sense of purpose with good mental health here 

This research from the Mental Health Foundation links social connections with better mental and physical health, better happiness levels and longer lives here. 

Case study 

L began volunteering for us in 2023.  She has learning difficulties as a result of Downs Syndrome. She volunteers once a week particularly enjoying the gardening  and cookery sessions along with recycling paper into animal bedding. She takes pride in taking home produce she has helped grow and food she has helped to cook. 

For L a paid job is out of reach but Crow provides the social aspects of part time work in a supportive and safe environment. She has made friends with one of the other volunteers, a woman a little older than her, so Crow has widened her social circle. 

Innovations in 2025 

During 2025 we started harvest cooking sessions as an extension of our gardening project. We found that while people were enjoying snacking on home grown tomatoes some of the produce needs to be cooked to be enjoyed. The sessions take place in the kitchen at our premises at Orchard House at times of year when the weather is too bad to garden and we have produce available. They’ve been really successful and among the dishes cooked so far have been potato wedges, vegetable quiche, Christmas biscuits and apple crumble. 

2025 was our first engagement week when we spent a week focusing on collecting views from our service users about what we do and possible new activities. We found that our core recycling paper and books activities are popular , that the gardening is more popular in winter than summer, cookery is popular and that there is some interest in restarting a programme of excursions, which Crow used to do. 

We considered the views and made some changes. In the coldest months of winter we now do more cookery and less gardening.  As a result in early 2026 we organised a trip out to a local college. 

The Scrapstore 

At Crow Recycling we are passionate about supporting our community. The Scrapstore is intended as a low-cost resource, helping make the arts accessible to as many people as possible and providing a hub for crafting socially and bringing people together.  

Our stock comprises preloved, surplus or unwanted items donated by businesses or members of the public, all of which is saved from otherwise ending up in landfill. Annually, we receive approximately 6 vanloads of fabric and leather rolls and remnants, plus around 1000 large bags full of arts and crafts donations from the public. 

We currently have around 400 members, of which approximately 10% are made up of community groups, churches, charities and CICs and 10% representing schools, nurseries, care homes and adult or home educators. The remaining 80% are creative members of the public, students, families and small creative enterprises and businesses.  

A significant number of our customers are neurodivergent, have disabilities or chronic physical or mental health conditions, and many have expressed to staff how they find the Scrapstore a very welcoming, inclusive and gentle place to shop for creative resources.  

A customer who attended one busy Saturday morning with her young autistic child, and struggled to calm and regulate her child after a sensory/emotional meltdown, was supported by staff. The customer came back a few weeks later for a chat, to thank the member of staff for being kind and empathetic, and providing a safe space to share experiences. 

The introduction of a therapy dog in the Scrapstore during 2024 elicited an incredibly positive response from customers and volunteers alike, with some customers coming primarily to spend time with the therapy dog. Several customers also come in so that they can spend time sorting and organising art and craft materials as a mindful activity.  

Many of our customers use Scrapstore resources to support the community themselves. A local church group member was able to make a complete set of costumes for a community nativity production at Christmas, all on a shoestring budget using fabric and haberdashery from the Scrapstore. The costumes were made as a collective craft project within the community to be used as part of the production, so was very much a collaborative effort designed to bring people together.  

Another member uses our materials to make puppets for trauma therapy services with children, and another for art therapy and craft activities for those with dementia.  

We also gift Christmas decorations, card games, board games and jigsaws to schools, care homes and wraparound care services from time to time. 

The Scrapstore provided volunteering opportunities for several people this year who were otherwise isolated by disability, reducing loneliness, supporting wellbeing and creating routine and purposeful activity as well as friendships and social support. We have one volunteer in the early stages of dementia, who finds repetitive sorting tasks very therapeutic. His time at the Scrapstore also provides respite for his carers. Another volunteer joined the Scrapstore to alleviate social isolation and lack of purpose after being left unable to work following a series of spinal injuries and related chronic health conditions. 

One of our other regular volunteers has been so inspired by her time at Crow, it has given her the confidence to set up her own craft workshop business, which has been a route back into work and financial independence around her physical disabilities and chronic health conditions.  

Regular private craft sessions are held in the Scrapstore for a local group that supports women in rebuilding their confidence following domestic abuse or relational/family trauma. Those attending have expressed how much they love the workshops, the friendships they have built there, and what a calm and welcoming place it is to be.  

We also run drop-in crochet sessions and craft workshops on Saturday mornings approximately once a month throughout the year. The crochet workshops create a regular social space for anyone wishing to learn to crochet, improve their skills, ask for advice or simply crochet in the company of others, and the craft workshops allow people to learn new skills such as rag-rug making, simple leather work and papercrafts. A permanent cosy craft corner has now been set up in the Scrapstore for this purpose, as well as providing a relaxing space for customers to take a break, relax or sit and chat.  

The workshops are largely run by skilled volunteers and Scrapstore staff, and are charged at a very low nominal fee of £5 for the morning, to make the sessions as widely accessible across our local community as possible. 

In 2026, we aim to run some weekday drop-in workshops after a successful trial in Autumn 2025, as well as adding a regular drop-in social sewing group to our Saturday sessions