LCON’s Housewarming Programme aims to enable homeowners to feel confident and well informed about their options and choices for eco-renovation.
Our aim is to provide base knowledge and a supportive framework to help local residents navigate through their options and become more educated ‘buyers’, preparing for the likely replacement of most UK gas central heating systems with heat pumps. Find out more about the programme here.
Continue reading
Oxford Communities for Zero Carbon are planning Eco-Renovation Oxford, a project to encourage residents to improve the insulation of their homes, through both large and small measures. We will hold a Green Open Homes Week at the end of June and an Eco-Renovation Fair at the Town Hall on 26 June. There’ll be a series of talks, films and advice booklets for householders, tenants and landlords.
Subject to funding, we expect to appoint a part-time paid organiser (about two days a week) from April to July 2022 to support these two linked events. We are particularly interested in expressions of interest from younger people, people of colour, and people from other groups that are less represented in climate and environmental work. What’s important to us is that you are talented and organised, have some experience of community work, and would like to work on a project to bring the benefits of warm homes to a wider public. If you’d be interested in being considered, send a paragraph about you and your day rates to Rebecca Nestor, chair@lcon.org.uk. If you’d like to know more first, ask for an informal chat with Rebecca.
As we confront news of soaring energy prices and the phasing out of gas boilers, many of us are turning our attention to how to make our homes warmer and more efficient.
In response we are launching our HouseWarming programme. This aims to prepare our homes to meet net zero targets, phase out fossil fuels and cut down energy use.
Continue reading
On the same day as the COP26 rally, north Oxford school students sent their own message: climate action can be fun!
Armed with 20 bags of second hand clothes from Oxfam, the 18 students from Cherwell, Oxford High School and St Clare’s designed and upcycled new outfits before heading to Oxford’s Natural History Museum for their fashion photo shoot. They have now produced some amazing posters to spread awareness of sustainable fashion among their peers and beyond – here are some of them:
Thank you to LCON member and sustainability educator Kim Polgreen, Jeni Williams, the teachers and staff at the schools, staff at Oxfam and the Natural History Museum, for making this happen – and most of all, thank you to the students for their passion, positivity and enthusiasm!
Here is what the Oxford Mail had to say about the project.
If you want to find out more about the impact of fast fashion and what we can do about it, have a look at our collection of information and resources here.
This autumn we are delighted to be working with Kim Polgreen, LCON member and sustainable fashion enthusiast, and teachers and students from three north Oxford schools, on a project to highlight the thrills available from creating your own fashion by shopping second hand: a second hand fashion photo shoot to raise awareness of sustainable fashion.
Kim is an Oxford-based freelance sustainability educator, running events for young people to enthuse them about a sustainable future. She is Youth Educator in Residence at Wytham Woods, Oxford University’s research woodland, and runs an annual summer school for teenagers at the University’s Environmental Change Institute.
The schools involved are The Cherwell School, Oxford High School and St Clare’s College and we are really grateful to the teachers who are so generously giving their time and enthusiasm to make this project happen. We are also so grateful to Janet at the Oxfam shop in Summertown who is letting us have access to piles of donated clothes, and to staff at Oxfam head office who are supporting us with resources and encouragement. And we are thrilled that the Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History has agreed to let us do our fashion shoot amongst their dinosaurs – highlighting extinction!
The shoot takes place on 6 November, the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice, also coinciding with COP26. Once the photos are taken the students will reconvene to create posters on sustainable fashion using their photos, and feed back what they have learned to their schools. LCON will help publicise the posters and messages more widely.
We hope the project will be exciting and fun, and engage a wide range of people in a growing movement to bend the trend from fast to sustainable fashion.
During August and early September, LCON undertook a survey of local residents to assess the adequacy of local bus services in our area. The aim was to provide information that we could share with Oxfordshire County Council, who are making an application (a Bus Service Improvement Plan) at the end of October for government funding for additional bus services. We also wanted to find out more generally whether or not current bus services are meeting the needs of residents, and how they affect the use of cars.
Continue reading
The fashion industry accounts for:
Three out of five items of clothing end up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being produced. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned.
We can all buy less, repair more and buy second-hand. And we can call for change across the fashion industry.
As part of Great Big Green Week, Low Carbon Oxford North have compiled a directory of Oxford shops that score poorly on sustainability and ethical ratings (based on rating website Good On You), together with contact details and a template email and social media message.
Continue reading
You may have patched up your old jeans, found some amazing vintage clothes, and donated unwanted items to charity. What if you need some new clothes and fancy a real-life (or online) shopping trip? Is it possible to shop sustainably for new clothes in Oxford?
The short answer is – it’s difficult, and there is no substitute for buying less. However, by being informed and considering our choices carefully, we can definitely mitigate the impact of our clothes shopping. In particular, we should aim to:
Jointly hosted by Low Carbon Oxford North and Low Carbon West Oxford on 19 May, our final ‘Spring Workshop’ from Communities for Zero Carbon Oxford looked at ‘Improving your home to use less energy’.
We were delighted to be joined by a wonderful group of expert contributors as well as ‘real people’ who had carried out extensive retrofits to their homes:
You can access a recording of the event and slides on Low Carbon West Oxford’s website, along with links to the slides and videos of the other events in the series.
Continue reading
Last week we explored the impact of our food choices in our ‘Talking food and climate’ event, our third ‘Spring Workshop’ from Communities for Zero Carbon Oxford (hosted by Low Carbon West Oxford). We were joined by another great team of experts, Anaïs Bozetine, Replenish Project Coordinator; Susan Hutchinson, LCWO; Ruth Lyster, School Cook at West Oxford Community Primary; and Nina Osswald, Good Food Oxford.
A recording and slides from the event are available on the Low Carbon West Oxford website.
Below is a summary of some of the information and advice from the event.
Continue reading