Talking waste and climate – tips and resources from our recent workshop

Our second ‘Spring Workshop’ from Communities for Zero Carbon Oxford (hosted by Low Carbon West Oxford) took place this week, ‘Talking climate and waste’. It was great to explore different aspects of consumption and waste with a fantastic team of experts, including Anaïs Bozetine from Replenish, Jenny Figueiredo, formerly at WRAP, and Mark Watson, Waste Strategy Projects Officer at Oxfordshire County Council.

A recording of the event and slides are available on the Low Carbon West Oxford website.

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It’s our 10 year anniversary! Watch our short film about LCON

Moved by the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, in 2010 a group of North Oxford residents got together to find ways of taking local action to combat climate change. To mark our first ten years, and to help more people find out who we are and what we do, we have made a short film. We describe the activities we have carried out over the years, reflect on where we need to go next, and share our hopes for a future Oxford. Watch the film on our YouTube channel – and if you like it, please share! 

Want to talk about Climate Change? Join one of our friendly Climate Cafes

Our Climate Cafes run monthly. Details are on our Meetup page. Climate Cafes provide a supportive space in which to talk about how the climate crisis is affecting us – without pressure to act. The cafes are facilitated by Rebecca Nestor. 

During the Coronavirus outbreak our Climate Cafes are taking place via online platform Zoom. Please see the Meetup page for further details, including future dates.

We think our Climate Cafes offer something different from the usual gatherings of people with interests in climate change. They are facilitated – so you can be sure that there will be space for you to speak. They are not designed to recruit you to do anything or to put you under any pressure. The idea behind them is that talking about climate change is really important – but it is often made more difficult by our feelings of guilt that we are not doing enough, or frustration that others are not doing enough. So we provide a space in which we don’t talk about what we or others are doing or should be doing. We just talk about climate change and how it is making us think and feel. Everyone is welcome.

Time to act: fossil fuel divestment

Last week Oxford students occupied St John’s College in protest at its £8.1m fossil fuel investments. The students held up placards reading “We can’t eat money or drink oil”, “Fossil Fuels are History” and  “Wake up Fossil Fools”. As they endured the overnight cold in their tents, the college’s response included attempts to keep out sleeping bags and blankets, deactivating the students’ key fobs, and a proposal from the Bursar that he could “arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect”. Calling themselves “Direct Action for Divestment“, the campaign group was supported by the Oxford Climate Justice CampaignXR Oxford and other climate activists.

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