Christmas Treecycling with PTV Route Optimiser
Experience the festive spirit with the Hospice Charity Partnership’s Christmas Treecycling event. Planned with the PTV Route Optimiser, this innovative initiative blends community, care, and cutting-edge planning to support vital palliative services.
The Hospice Charity Partnership
Formed by the merger of Birmingham St Mary's and John Taylor Hospices in 2021, the Hospice Charity Partnership helps people, and their families, living with life-limiting illnesses, up to the end of life. We provide expert palliative and end of life care, with personalised support, at home, in the community, or at the hospices, and offer care and support to bereaved families. It costs £15 million a year to run our services, with 40% of revenue coming via external fundraising campaigns and events.
Treecycling Campaign
Our flagship campaign is Treecycling, a hugely successful fundraising and community environmental service which has raised almost £500k over 11 years by collecting used Christmas trees for chipping into biomass fuel by a national environmental management company and local tree surgeons.
Supporters book online and donate to have their trees collected and avoid the trip to the tip, and, thanks to key suppliers who donate their time, vehicles and equipment, our costs are kept to a minimum. Marketed via tree retailers, leaflet and banner advertising as well as social media, the campaign enjoys a loyal following of regular supporters and repeat customers and operates across most of Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield & Solihull.
Manual Planning
In the early years of Treecycling we planned the collection routes using maps and simple spreadsheets. However, the volume of data from the rapid growth of the campaign soon made it impossible to produce efficient routes in the limited time available between the close of bookings and collection weekend. The brief, to sort some 5000 addresses into logical collection routes, accommodating differing vehicle capacities and drop off site restrictions, is complex, and has to be completed in a very limited timescale. Also the 'pro bono' aspect adds an additional challenge. some 5,000 addresses into logical
Efficient Deliveries
We require simple, easy to read address lists in a logical driving sequence. These are readily abstracted from the results we receive from PTV - the Route Optimiser software evidently produces far more than we need in terms of timing and travel distances, but takes into account local traffic restrictions and access constraints, which are often key issues for drivers in unfamiliar areas. Thanks to the excellent relationship between PTV and the campaign team, PTV have always given us the data we need in plenty of time to brief our collectors before the collection.
Perfect Balance
The vital requirement for Treecycling is for us to receive the results in time for us to embed them into our volunteers' collection instructions before the collection weekend, so that they can familiarise themselves with the task in advance. PTV's phased production of the results enables us to produce about 80 individual route packs to suit our programme deadlines. They are a wonderful team to work with and willingly accommodate our requirements, some of which are not easily achieved. The service is amazing and we can only offer our thanks in return. Their willingness to do it all again next year speaks for itself.
2024 Update
Treecycling 2024 was bigger and better than ever - we collected over 6,500 trees and raised a record breaking £130,000! In addition, thanks to the excellent route planning by PTV, and greater volunteer numbers, the collection was completed much more quickly than previous years.
"to sort some 5,000 addresses into logical collection routes, accommodating differing vehicle capacities and drop off site restrictions, is complex, and has to be completed in a very limited timescale ... in 2023 regular volunteers commented that the routes were better than ever" - Richard Green, Treecycling Project Mentor at The Hospice Charity Partnership.
