The Crow Recycling Scrapstore has some second hand plywood to sell thanks to a donation from a building site. The sheets of 18mm exterior grade plywood, some painted, are approximately 120cm by 240cm. They cost £5 each for Scrapstore members. There is also a second hand wooden picket gate measuring  91cm high and 88cm wide. The gate costs £3 for Scrapstore members. Scrapstore membership costs £10 per year. Opening times at the Scrapstore are Mondays to Thursdays 9.30am to 3pm and Fridays 9.30am to 12 noon.

  The fantastic Leamington Repair Cafe is our latest new Scrapstore member. Leamington Repair Cafe volunteers host regular events where people can bring broken possessions. Volunteers will fix them or show the owners how to fix them or make it a joint effort. Their Facebook video shows volunteers everything from furniture to clothes. Many of our Scrapstore members are organisations - we ask people shopping as part of an organisation to bring the organisation's Scrapstore membership card with them. Find the Leamington Repair Cafe on Facebook here.

  Pupils from the Woodlands School in Coleshill weren't able to visit the warehouse so Crow Recycling took some of the warehouse based activities to the pupils. In my role as education development worker I visited the special school to talk about recycling generally and about what we do at Crow. I took some non confidential waste paper for a paper sorting exercise and a mixed box of steel and aluminium cans for a can sorting exercise. We talked about what we can recycle and how it benefits us. Thanks to the Woodlands School for inviting Crow to visit - it was great to meet the pupils and talk about what we do.  

  The aluminium can crushing machines are running this week turning our star recycling metal into bales ready to be driven to a recycling plant and melted down. Then it can get made into anything from more cans, bicycles and buildings to aeroplanes. Aluminium is a pretty plentiful metal  - there's loads of it in the earth's crust. So where is the incentive to recycle? Quite apart from the environmental benefits of recycling it's a great deal cheaper to recycle used aluminium than use new. That's because aluminium occurs as an ore, in other words mixed with other substances. To separate it needs electrolysis, a process which needs large amounts of expensive electricity. At a local level here in Coventry it means we can pay people small amounts of cash for aluminium cans, crush and bale them and get paid by recycling plants for the bales. For some reason they're called biscuits, we don't know why. Aluminium can be recycled over and over again without getting damaged or degraded. Compare that to plastic - for a start it can be harder to get the recycled stuff up to the same standards as the new - no problem for our recycling star aluminium. Image by Jasmin Sessler from Pixabay Plastic is light and takes up loads of space in our van. But we still get paid by the tonne. The price paid for plastic we had sorted into its different grades would hardly cover the diesel of driving it to the plant given how many van loads it would take to make up a tonne of such light material. Meanwhile cheap or reasonably priced oil, one of the main ingredients of plastic, is an [...]

  We are closed on this year's early May Bank Holiday which falls on Monday May 6 this year. We're open as normal the rest of the week.

    Crow Easter opening and closing times Friday April 19 Good Friday closed Monday April 22 Easter Monday closed Tuesday April 23 closed All other days open as normal.

Our usual e mail address is working again so if you'd like to get in touch you can e mail us at crow@talktalkbusiness.net. Previously our e mail address wasn't working but happily it's back to normal.

  Easter chicks are going cheep cheep cheep when they're made with leftover wool donated to the Crow Recycling Scrapstore for reuse. Visit the Scrapstore for paper, wool and card to make cute chicks, Easter baskets and Easter cards. Balls of wool vary from 10 pence to £1 depending on how big they are, paper is 2 pence for an A4 sheet and plain card is 3 pence for an A4 sheet. Sheets of patterned card are 10 pence each. The Crow Recycling Scrapstore is a member only shop - membership costs £10 per year. Opening times are Mondays to Thursdays 9.30am to 3pm and Fridays 9.30am to 12 noon. Find us at Orchard House, Sparkbrook Street, Coventry, CV1 5LB.  

Our e mail is not currently working please contact us on 022476552444. Apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you from the Crow team.

  Blue tits and blackbirds are nesting in the wildlife garden behind the Crow warehouse. The blue tits are making a nest in a nest box installed a few years ago and the blackbirds have chosen the hedge at the back of the garden. Hopefully the blue tits are on the alert for the sparrowhawks which sometimes swoop above the garden looking for small birds to eat. The garden was created with help from Warwickshire Wildlife Trust offering a habitat for birds and bugs. With a name like Crow the organisation might seem ideal place for birds to live  but in fact Crow is an acronym - it stands for Coventry Recycling of Waste.