Green-works

Great working environmental with "phenominal networking"

The idea for Green-Works hit Colin Crooks on a train ten years ago and he hasn't looked back since. Green-Works is now a fully fledged charity and social enterprise, dedicated to radically changing the way society thinks about waste and Colin is the Chief Executive.

"I set up Green-Works to address an issue I was becoming increasingly aware of," he says.

"Office furniture was being dumped wholesale by companies, right across the country, particularly in London. There was a very limited second-hand trade and the vast majority of the furniture was being landfilled. At the same time there were lots of charitable and third sector organisations that desperately need reasonably good furniture but didn't have much money."

The venture started with Colin and a few volunteers collecting the furniture by renting a van on a day-to-day basis. Then, in 2002, he decided an office would be a good idea. The transformation to the organisation, he says, was almost instant. "It's interesting, as soon as you take on office space, and take on the discipline of paying rent and going into work, rather than working from home, it changes the dynamic quite considerably."

Colin moved into CAN Mezzanine's original Waterloo building and credits this with helping to solidify Green-Works.

"I'd heard of CAN Mezzanine and loved what they were doing. I saw that it had a fantastic atmosphere, and was a really great place to be. There's a professionalism that came instantly with CAN Mezzanine - the address, the security, the reception, the postal services. Green-Works was able to portray itself as something bigger than it actually was. The postcode (London SE1) was also quite impressive. At that time, we started to take on staff, so it all clicked. I suddenly had a place where I could interview people and meet clients. It formalised very quickly and became a real organisation because we had a desk in a proper office."

Besides the benefits of having a managed premises, Colin also appreciates the networking benefits that come with CAN Mezzanine. "In the early days, when social enterprise was still very young the networking was phenomenal. We met a lot of like-minded people going through very similar growing pains. That was very important, because there wasn't much sympathy outside in the big bad world," he laughs. "The networking and support were so useful - and still are. We got a lot of franchising guidance and financial management guidance for all sorts of things, both through CAN directly but also through the broader network of CAN Mezzanine customers. And that has been, I think, the mainstay of the CAN Mezzanine system."

Green-Works has gone up and down in numbers over the years and, in 2005, they took on a warehouse in Wembley (north London) where their finance and marketing departments are based. They also have warehouses in east London, Bristol, Wolverhampton and Paisley.

Overall, it's the full service that CAN provides that impresses Colin the most. "Social entrepreneurs are very sociable - we want to network and share ideas. That's the type of people we are. The atmosphere here is calm, friendly and relaxed. Coming to a place like this is restorative in its own way, it energises you. For relatively small organisations it really works."

For more information on Green-Works and their recycled furniture, visit http://www.green-works.co.uk/