Carbon Cost: A Practical Guide to Understanding How Our Daily Decisions Impact the Planet

Hello to our amazing community and welcome to the Cherwell Collective Blog! I’m Emily Connally, Managing Director of Cherwell Collective and founder of its constituent groups (Cherwell Larder, Climatarian Kitchen, Harvest @ Home, Waste Innovation Station, Oxford Party Library).  We’re now into our fourth “official” year, can you even believe it? To celebrate this milestone,  we are starting a Cherwell Collective blog called Our Collective Thoughts. Our blog will be a guide to help people understand the Carbon Cost of our daily lives. We also aim to help each and every one of our readers make the decisions that are best for them. 

We’re very grateful because, over these years, we’ve asked a lot of you: to shop surplus first, to create useful things with waste, to eat to save the Earth, and to build food security from the ground up. You’ve always responded by sharing your skills, time, knowledge, and resources freely to help one another recover first from the COVID-19 pandemic and now the cost of living crisis. 

In that same timeframe, you’ve only ever really asked us for one thing in return: help wading through the vastness of information out there to know what the “right” climate choices are. 

For some of you, that might mean cutting the amount of meat you eat in half. For others, it may mean learning how to repair clothing. And for some, it might mean you never set foot in an airplane again. For all of you, that means trying to change your life in manageable ways to do what’s right for the planet.

Our goals with the Cherwell Collective blog are to share knowledge and tools that anyone can use to build resilience to the climate crisis.  Some of the knowledge we share might feel overwhelming or scary, even impossible. When that happens… 

Don’t forget the power of the Collective: thousands of tiny imperfect steps in the right direction will move our community forward more than just one person living perfectly sustainably.

Who We Are:

At Cherwell Collective, we like to say, “come for the food, stay for the revolution.” That’s because over 60% of our new visitors first come through Cherwell Larder’s marketplace, which started as a food surplus support unit during the COVID lockdowns. 

But what exactly do we mean by revolution? 

Cherwell Collective’s mission is to reduce our community’s carbon footprint. 

By that, we don’t mean reminding you of melting ice caps. 

We mean providing a way for everyone to build a more sustainable future, especially those who are often excluded from the climate conversations due to social, financial, or medical inequities. 

Our Aims: 

  • Reduce waste and facilitate a circular economy to make the most of resources available
  • Increase collective knowledge (e.g. through skills sharing and education)
  • Build a sustainable future for our community together

Our Activities: 

Here’s a fun fact: Though we say come for the food, stay for the revolution, the very first Cherwell Collective users actually came for the party: Oxford Party Library was the first group, founded in November 2019 to share party supplies and keep costs to families down. 

Through our activities above, we support the well-being of our entire community. 

  • We foster social connection and reduce isolation. 
  • We promote increased mental health and physical activity. 
  • We capitalise on collective wisdom to make the most of the resources available.

What Are We Aiming to Do Going Forward?

Looking forward, our community is growing, and we are welcoming new visitors from further and further away to our events. While we’re excited news is spreading, we worry about the carbon footprint of thousands of people traveling to us. Therefore, we’re coming to you! 

We know hundreds and thousands of people travel to our headquarters from other places in Oxfordshire, including Bicester, Banbury, Witney, and Abingdon. So, we’ll send a team to speak to our visitors and find out whether they want to help us build the services they want in order to stay closer to home.  

We’re also interested in reaching people who are coming to us from outside Oxfordshire, and working with our more influential partners to support better understanding of the Carbon Cost of our decisions nationwide. We have partners in Rugby, Wales, Manchester, Leeds, Durham, and Cornwall. We’re working to increase transparency for people in real time so that considering the environment in our day-to-day decisions becomes as easy as possible.

What Will You Find Here at Our Collective Thoughts?

The main goal of our blog, Our Collective Thoughts, is to share knowledge about the carbon footprints of our decisions. You can return regularly to get tips to reduce the Carbon Cost of your daily life.

We plan to highlight a few regular types of posts, including updates on what’s happening with Cherwell Collective and partners, seasonal Climatarian Kitchen recipes, changes to Cherwell Larder hours, new offerings, tips on sustainable celebrations, and guides in repurposing waste from WISH. 

In the next few weeks you can expect: 

  • A word from Ash Pile, our Sous Chef, about his delicious Autumn Climatarian recipe: Quinoa Stuffed Pumpkins 
  • Lowering the Carbon Cost of Christmas Gift Giving this year
  • A quick guide to the Carbon Cost of Travel
  • Some Climatarian Loving Your Leftovers guides and tips to reduce food waste around the holidays
  • An invitation to participate in our Carbon Cost of Food Week in January

Let’s Have a Dialogue

This post is long enough now, so I’ll leave you with one last thought: It would be great to know what sort of information you want, if you need help with any specific decisions, and what you’d like to see more of. So please sign up for alerts here, and if you have any feedback at any point on the blog email evaluation.wish@gmail.com. 

Oh, and I hope to see you around at WISH or at any of our upcoming events: