A leading Lancashire business has won its third Queen’s Award – the highest accolade awarded to UK businesses.
Recycling Lives has won a Queen’s Award for International Trade, following wins for Sustainable Development in 2010 and 2014.
The Queen’s Award for International Trade recognises Recycling Lives’ work processing waste streams for businesses including John Lewis Group, BT and British Gas, producing high-quality metals and plastics to be reused or remanufactured. It has grown from just four sites in Lancashire to nine sites nationwide in the last 18 months, winning major waste contracts and growing annual sales by 47% to £46m. Its 15-acre Recycling Park, in Preston, processes thousands of tonnes of waste each year, in doing so preventing 120,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions by returning recycled metals to markets across Europe, Asia and the US.
Steven Jackson OBE DL, Recycling Lives’ founder, said of the win: “We are delighted to have won a third Queen’s Award – a fitting tribute to the skill and dedication of our team, who have delivered rapid growth from a regional recycler to a business with global reach.
“This is one of the measures of our success, along with the growing number of clients who choose to work with us, sharing our values as we deliver commercial contracts and create social impact.
“Recycling Lives’ model shows a business can be a force for good, combining commercial and charitable activities to deliver business growth and social value for the communities we serve.”
Central to Recycling Lives’ customer offer is its commitment to creating social impact through three charitable programmes. These offer residential support for the homeless, offender rehabilitation to reduce reoffending, and support for community groups and charities through food redistribution. Each is sustained by the business’ activities, not reliant on public funding, while generating social value through savings for the taxpayer.
Recycling Lives is one of just five Lancashire businesses, and the first in Preston, to be handed three Queen’s Awards. Nationally, just 185 businesses have won three or more Queen’s Awards since the scheme was launched in 1966, placing Recycling Lives in the same league as household names Jaguar, Weetabix, Marks & Spencer and The Financial Times.
The organisation achieved its first Queen’s Award in 2010 for its television recycling facilities and processes in Preston. It remains the largest TV recycler in the country. Its second Queen’s Award was earned in 2014 for its work in HMP Kirkham, offering offenders opportunities to develop skills and secure jobs upon release while working on recycling processes within the Category D men’s prison. The programme has since been rolled out into nine prisons nationally, reducing reoffending rates from the national average of around 67% to just 6%.
