Kinross Wooden Products

One of the main aspects of Kinross Wooden Products Company’s (KWPC) service delivery is a furniture management programme which diverts surplus furniture out of the waste stream and brings it back into reuse. The operational business model is founded on a concept developed by KWPC director, John Ross, in 2003. The pilot project for this programme was developed in conjunction with Perth & Kinross Council and was awarded the Scottish Waste Industry Environmental Innovation Award in 2005. Since that time, the programme has been adopted by local authorities across UK. Clients include local authorities in Perth, Dundee, Angus, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Stirling, Camden and Manchester; environmental organisations such as Scottish Natural Heritage, WWF UK, Zero Waste Scotland, Keep Scotland Beautiful and The Forestry Commission; charities, community groups and sports clubs. KWPC was created to focus the delivery of this service and to further develop the remanufacturing service. By 2019, the furniture management programme has seen over 20,000 items of furniture put back into use, delivering over 600 tonnes of landfill diversion. The largest single contract was for London Fire Brigade where over 8,200 items of furniture were processed with over 93% being reused or recycled at a material level. These figures were independently audited, and the project won a Sustainable Development UK commendation. KWPC leads on the development and expansion of this programme. At a local level, KWPC runs the Perth office furniture reuse programme. This manages surplus or redundant furniture from Perth & Kinross Council and Scottish Natural Heritage via a central stock holding facility in Perth. Furniture is graded, repaired or refurbished and put into stock for future reuse. Furniture that is no longer suitable for reuse is separated into materials and components which can be reused at a lower level or remanufactured into brand new products through KWPC’s remanufacturing service. Over the past 10 years the amount of furniture waste generated by KWPC partners disposed of to landfill has been reduced from over 60% to less than 3% through the use of this programme. Perth & Kinross Council identified in a recent press announcement that in addition to the landfill saving, they had reduced their annual spend on new furniture by over £143,000 annually. This was in line with their targets to reduce raw materials used in manufacturing.

Currently, KWPC is in discussion with Zero Waste Perth, Beautiful Perth, Perth & Kinross Council and several community third-sector groups to develop a programme to train people with the skills necessary to carry out furniture repair and remanufacture. One of the KWPC’s policies is to provide local community groups that cannot afford quality office furniture, access to the surplus stock free of charge. These products generally make use of the recycled materials from the surplus furniture. Larger scale products such as garden studios are manufactured from raw, virgin timber materials that are accredited with the international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) label. All timbers are sourced through Perth based, MGM Timber or B&Q, both of which have full FSC certification for their supply chains. Any surplus timber, metal or plastic materials which cannot be reused are recycled through registered materials recycling centres or, where appropriate, are donated to organisations or individuals who have efficient wood burning stoves and heating systems. No timber or metal materials are ever disposed of to landfill.

We are very proud to have Kirsteen Ross from Kinross Wooden Products as one of our Circular Tayside Ambassadors!