by

Energy Saving Homes Event 18-29 June – we need your help!

Charlie Luxton talks about sustainable homes

Our Communities for Zero Carbon home energy project, ‘Energy Saving Homes’, is now funded and underway – and we need your help!

 Have you made your home more energy efficient in any way and would you like to inspire others to do the same?  

We’re looking for people like you, who have installed anything from letterbox brushes, insulation and glazing, to renewables, to take part.  

Choose what times and which days to open – and you can even do it virtually if you prefer (eg through zoom). Demonstrating what you’ve done and explaining all the pros and cons to your neighbours can have a really big impact. 


Find out more at Communities for Zero Carbon Oxford and contact Lois Muddiman at  lois.muddiman@energysavinghomes.co.uk if you’re interested in taking part.

by

“I care about our future” – lessons from our Housewarming launch and next steps

What is Housewarming?

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 →
by

Freelance Community Organiser needed! New deadline 25 March

The project: Eco-Renovation Oxford

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.

Register your interest by 25 March

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.

We’re recruiting!
by

We’re recruiting!

We are looking for a talented freelance community organiser to step in and provide additional support for about 2-3 hours a week during a temporary increase in other commitments that is affecting our existing co-ordinator’s availability.  The opportunity is available until April 2022 in the first instance, and more hours may be available during this period depending on the availability of funding.
 
Working as an independent contractor accountable to the trustee board through the chair, the organiser will focus on engaging our members and supporters. We want you to bring your own ideas to this work as well as contributing to maintaining our social media presence, keeping our website up to date, and organising and managing our public events. The aim of the work will be to achieve public engagement on a range of activities to reduce carbon emissions in North Oxford – including an ambitious home energy project and a series of investigations of how to improve active travel in our area.
 
To find out more, please contact Rebecca Nestor on chair@lcon.org.uk or download further details here. The closing date for applications is 24 December 2021 and interviews will be held in the week commencing 10 January 2022.

by

“Forget fast fashion – buy second hand”

Students from the Cherwell, Oxford High School and St Clare’s arrive at the Natural History Museum for their photo shoot

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.

Respond to the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 and Ox-Cam Arc consultation
by

Respond to the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 and Ox-Cam Arc consultation

Two important consultations are taking place right now that will significantly affect Oxfordshire’s ability to respond to the climate crisis. It is important that as many people as possible respond to the consultations and put the case for climate.

The first, for the Oxfordshire Plan 2050, closes on Friday 8 October 2021. We are pleased to support the consultation responses by Oxford Friends of the Earth and the Coalition for Healthy Streets and Active Travel. You can use their responses to inform your own and we urge you to do so.

The second, for the Ox-Cam Arc, closes on Tuesday 12 October 2021. Friends of the Earth have suggestions on how to respond to this too (it’s the same page as for the Oxfordshire Plan, scroll down to the bottom).

by

Coming up: Sustainable Fashion schools photo shoot among the dinosaurs

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.

by

The results are in! Find out how residents responded to our bus survey

The survey

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 →
by

Take action for sustainable fashion

Fast Fashion is harming the planet

The fashion industry accounts for:

  • 20% of industrial water pollution
  • up to 35% of ocean micro plastics
  • 4% of global fresh water use
  • 4-8% of global carbon emissions

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.

Write to your favourite Oxford shops to demand better

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 →