The challenge
The National Trust is Europe’s biggest conservation charity. Its mission is to tackle climate change, protect historic sites, and help people and nature to thrive. Blickling Estate is just one of the over 500 sites cared for by the National Trust, and these values are mirrored across the entire estate.
In addition to the estate’s historic library, Blickling also has the largest second-hand bookshop the National Trust has to offer. In keeping with the trust’s sustainable practices, this bookshop needed an environmentally-friendly way to dispose of donated books that were unsuitable for resale.
Our approach
At Shred Station, disposing of paper-based material is our speciality. We mainly process confidential documents, but also offer recycling services for non-confidential paper. Whether it’s books or balance sheets, we guarantee that 100% of the paper we process at our depots is recycled at UK paper mills. We also:
Operate with a strict Zero to Landfill policy.
Deliver our services with a CarbonNeutral® certified fleet.
We use electric vehicles and Euro 6 low-emission trucks for all services, and offset all remaining driving emissions through reputable projects.Are committed to carbon neutrality.
We became a lifetime CarbonNeutral® certified company in 2024 after 5 years of annual certification.
These environmental commitments are important to us as well as our planet-conscious customers, including Blickling Estate.
To provide a sustainable solution and help the estate’s second-hand bookshop to manage unsellable book waste, we installed a 40-yard lockable skip at the site. We collect and empty this skip on a regular basis. Our Norwich depot’s close proximity to the estate also means that we can use our fully electric hooklift - which is charged with our large solar array - to collect the skip without stopping to top up the battery. This keeps our emissions as low as possible.
Above: Shred Station’s electric hooklift truck.
It was important to us that any disposal process aligned with our sustainability values, so finding a partner like Shred Station has been incredibly valuable. Their commitment to environmental responsibility, alongside their reliable and professional service, has given us real confidence in how unsellable books and waste materials are managed.
Connor Eke
Property Fundraising Lead and Bookshop Manager at Blickling Estate
The results
Between April and September 2026, we collected 11.16 tonnes of unsellable books from Blickling’s second-hand bookshop. All of these were recycled. Recycling this large number of books saves valuable resources. In this short period of time alone, the bookshop saved:
189 trees from deforestation
357,120 litres of water
46,872 kWh of electricity
2.58 m3 of landfill space
6,696 kg of CO2*.
Beyond sustainability, business services like recycling collections also need to be reliable and flexible. We collect the bookshop’s skip on a schedule that suits its requirements. The estate isn’t tied to set collections on specified frequencies. We collect the skip when it’s full, whether that means collections are every 4 weeks, every 12 weeks, or somewhere in between. This allows us to minimise disruption at the site, and means we can keep collection costs low.
The team is always friendly, efficient and dependable, and it is clear that sustainability is genuinely embedded within their operation. We are proud to be working with a company whose values so closely reflect our own.
Connor Eke
Property Fundraising Lead and Bookshop Manager at Blickling Estate
For Shred Station, Blickling Estate’s second-hand bookshop has been an ideal client. As well as being able to extend the life of these books in the form of new paper products, our team has very much enjoyed getting to know Connor and the bookshop volunteers. The wonderful scenery at the estate has also been a highlight for our collection crew, and we look forward to recycling many more books as our relationship continues.
*Figures taken from the recycling industry benchmark averages for creating paper from recycled sources versus using virgin pulp.