Tipping Point East Opens UK's Largest Circular Hub
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Joel de Mowbray founded Yes Make after his 2020 south‑London experience, converting a 1980s electric milk float into a logging vehicle to mill and transport wood from felled urban trees.
- Yes Make, Resolve Collective, and Material Cultures together opened Tipping Point East (TPE) on a 20,000 sq m industrial site in Newham, the UK’s largest hub for circular construction.
- TPE processes and certifies reclaimed construction materials, offering them at as low as 10 % of commercial price, and its yard holds glass panes, sinks, pipes, and reclaimed timber.
- TPE has a five‑year lease on its Silvertown site and has already turned away at least 10,000 fire doors because the team lacks certified training to test them.
- National Saw Mills staff Tom and Jerry demonstrated portable sawmilling of a 105‑year‑old sequoia from Linford Arboretum to Central Saint Martins students, highlighting UK reliance on centralized milling and its status as the third‑largest timber importer.
- UK construction generates about 62 % of the nation’s waste, with much of it ending in landfill despite recycling efforts.
Why it matters: Builders and community projects gain cheap, locally sourced reclaimed material, cutting costs and diverting waste from landfill, while the hub’s skill shortage—evident in the 10,000 fire doors turned away—shows that training and certification are critical bottlenecks for scaling circular construction.
