With a refreshed brand, renewed focus and new management, the B Corp-rated business is now targeting growth, both for itself and its industry, its bosses say.
Group CEO Adrian Murphy joined the business at the beginning of 2024. Having worked for a number of privately owned and private equity-backed businesses as both CEO and COO, he brings a raft of experience. He’s relishing RLS’ start-up style culture, though: “It’s exciting to have joined RLS at such a pivotal time in its growth. It has the drive and mentality of a start-up, with the expertise and experience of an established, trusted player, who provide a range of unique integrated services that are essential to the UK’s plans to reach net-zero by 2050” he says.
“What appealed to me, what I think makes it a really interesting business, is how sustainability and social value are in its DNA. Environmental sustainability is the head and heart of what we offer and how we deliver it. Social sustainability is our purpose and a big part of our personality. And economic sustainability is what underpins us. We make our business decisions considering all three.”
RLS’s predecessor, Recycling Lives Ltd – the Lancashire-based, formerly family-run business which made its name for using its operations to support and sustain charity programmes – was restructured and part-sold in late 2023. Its assets, including its fleet, metal recycling facilities and end-of-life vehicle processing sites, were sold to Global Ardour Metal Ltd. Recycling Lives Services (RLS) was formed of RL Ltd’s environmental and compliance businesses. It remains part of the investment portfolio of private equity house Three Hills Capital.
It also remains a close supporter of Recycling Lives Charity & Social Enterprise, with which it continues to share its name; though no longer its branding, following a brand refresh to reflect its new tech-led service positioning.
Recycling innovation
Recycling Lives Services delivers essential services including waste and resource management, and producer compliance schemes. It supports clients including BT, British Gas, VINCI and John Lewis to manage their waste, and the likes of Hisense and Midea to evidence their producer recycling obligation.
It does much more than just recycling though: “Our environmental approaches extend beyond just the solutions we come up with for clients – on how waste streams or resources are managed and processed – embedding compliance and taking the lead on tackling major issues in the industry,” Murphy explains.
It has introduced a new approach to battery recycling, for example. Its ‘chemistry specific’ approach sorts and treats batteries by chemistry type, going beyond the regulatory requirements that you find in the industry to ensure greater environmental outcomes.
Offering consultative support, Recycling Lives Service share their practices across the industry helping to reduce the risks that batteries bring. Recycling Lives Services offer collection, sorting, storage and treatment services for all battery types taking care of this risk in a safe and responsible way.
Social value creation
RLS’s battery recycling – processing around 1,500 tonnes annually – is one of the areas where its operations create social, as well as environmental, value. Its Workington site, an ABTO, offers training and employment opportunities for ex-offenders on ‘day release’ work placements from prison. Its two other sites, also AATFs, in Lancashire and the Midlands, offer similar opportunities as they process waste electricals and commodities.
The business continues to support and sustain Recycling Lives Charity & Social Enterprise (RLSE), managing much of its WEEE recycling through eight prison-based workshops to create employment for hundreds of ex-offenders each year. These processed 1.17m waste electricals last year alone.
Recycling Lives Services also provide a range of direct donations and in-kind contributions to the Charity’s residential, specialist support and food redistribution programmes too. In doing this and delivering its own social value programmes, it supported the creation of £8.26m social value in 2023 and a further £34m generated from their work with local suppliers and landfill diversion.
“Our roots in helping to establish and nurture a charity give us a culture and authenticity akin to that of a charity,” says Murphy. “What I’ve found from the team here is that people are proud to work for a company that makes a difference, not just a company that makes a profit.”
Recycling Lives Services is an accredited Real Living Wage employer. 14% of their staff are employed on temporary licence, which is a mechanism that allows serving prisons to participate in activities outside of prison helping them to develop vital life skills that contribute to their resettlement into community. Only 6% of the people that Recycling Lives Services support are said to reoffend, compared to the UK average of over 25%.
Business transformation
While its environmental and social values have remained throughout the recent changes, other areas of the business have been transformed.
Murphy explains: “As we’ve transitioned the business, we’ve remodelled or restructured some elements and built others from scratch – it’s been about evolution, though, rather than revolution. This has included implementing new systems and introducing the latest digital technologies, like using AI and automation to streamline processes and ensure compliance.”
Using AI, OCR and automation, RLS has implemented systems that ensure its supply chain partners are fully compliant and certified and that all documentation, weighbridge tickets, invoices and waste transfer notes, are complete, accurate and consistent.
Ease of use is the central aim here, Murphy explains: “We’ve updated or created all our systems in ways that make it easy to do business with us. Day-to-day, customers can use our portal anywhere and for any site, safe in the knowledge that suppliers are audited. This is one way we assume some of the risk or take away one of the headaches for customers, by doing the compliance checks for them.”
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