The Lindum Rotary Club has teamed up with District and County Councillor Cllr Marianne Overton and North Kesteven District Council to trial an exciting initiative reusing waste sawdust and shavings to reduce fuel poverty in the Cliff Villages.

“This is the start of something really big as the idea could well be taken up by North Kesteven and parts of Lincolnshire. This helps the environment and helps to reduce fuel poverty. Many of our villages do not have gas and many people rely on coal stoves. This project reuses a waste product to help reduce heating bills.”

“Lindum Rotary Club has a superb record of achievement in encouraging environmental responsibility with their successful annual Lincolnshire Environmental Awards, judged by David Bellamy. This new initiative is a bold step further, leading from the front in partnership with a sustainable commercial enterprise EH Thorne (Beehives)Ltd, to reuse waste and help others.”

“E H Thorne(Beehives) Ltd already has excellent green credentials, making beehives for around the world using wood from sustainable sources, and now they have invested in machinery to enable making good use of a waste product. ”

With help from The Carbon Trust, Thornes invested in a briquette machine and bi-mass combustion unit. The machinery converts the waste sawdust and shavings under immense pressure into small briquettes. The briquettes are then incinerated in the bio-mass combustion unit which heats a large proportion of their factory. There is however a surplus of briquettes which have now become available for this scheme. The briquettes burn like coal with similar calorific value, leave very little or no ash and qualify for zero carbon emissions.

The Lindum Rotary Club are trialling properties in the Cliff Villages, where they have good support from members and have delivered the fuel, free, to 11 homes within that area.