This report shares significant achievements for Cherwell Collective in 2024, focusing on our first full year of operating WISH after its pilot period.  We also share what’s coming up on our agenda in 2025.

Milestones for Cherwell Collective’s Five Core Programmmes

We operate Cherwell Collective, CIC, through five core programmes:  WISH, which is a highlight of the report below, alongside Cherwell Larder Marketplace, Climatarian Kitchen, Harvest @ Home, and Oxford Party Library.

Cherwell Larder

Cherwell Larder Marketplace is a physical and online marketplace for distributing surplus food and household items to our local community that emerged from the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. We advocate the concept of “shopping surplus first” as the first of our 5 Climatarian Principles. One way to do so is to check and utilise the food surplus offered by Cherwell Larder before you visit the shops. This approach not only saves money but also means that more items are kept in circulation and less are produced. This lowers our community’s carbon footprint and builds community connection and sharing.

Through the larder we shared over 107 tonnes of surplus with our community, saving the equivalent of over 1.3 million car miles of surplus in Kidlington. 

Climatarian Kitchen

Emerging from the efforts of Cherwell Larder, Climatarian Kitchen is our food innovation group. We seek to help people understand the scale of the impact our agricultural system has on climate change and the Carbon Cost of our diets. As part of these efforts, we run a surplus cafe and catering kitchen where our mouthwatering meals are made using food surplus or local, seasonal ingredients. By using surplus ingredients, we redirect food that might be wasted back into the community. We served over 6,700 meals to the community in the last year using only surplus.

Harvest @ Home

Harvest @ Home empowers individuals to grow their own food at home through skills learned as they care for the community greenspace gardens we manage. This combats food insecurity, promotes well-being, and lowers our communal carbon footprint. The surplus food grown in these gardens directly supplies Cherwell Larder, Climatarian Kitchen, and other local community organisations in Banbury and Bicester, including the Bicester Foodbank. Take five minutes to read about one of the families supporting Banbury Youth Homelessness Project through our Harvest @ Home community garden on that site.

Oxford Party Library

Oxford Party Library (OPL) is a lending resource for common party supplies, with additional supplies for children’s parties. By lending reusable party supplies, this “library of things” helps reduce waste and enable participation in a circular economy that helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the past year we have made 235 loans via OPL. As each loan saves a family an average of £75.00, that’s over £18,000 in cost savings we supported for the community.

Waste Innovation Station Hubs

Our Waste Innovation Station Hubs (WISH) began as a pilot project in late 2022 with the goal of helping our local communities in Oxfordshire reduce waste, which can help mitigate climate change. Then, at the end of 2023, we were awarded a full grant from the National Lottery UK to fund our expansion and operations over the next 5 years. The past year marked a momentous period for our WISH programme which connects dozens of organisations to build a local circular economy. We focus on reducing the waste of everyday household items and consumer goods and connected people to each other and nature to build community coherence and more sustainable infrastructure. 

What WISH Is All About

Our aim at WISH, in collaboration with all the Cherwell Collective programmes, is to help the community increase infrastructure to reduce consumption and, in turn, reduce waste. 

Waste reduction outreach includes:

  • Teaching the community how to participate in the Circular Economy, including the circular economy “Rs” like Repair, Rethink, and Repurpose, adding to old familiars like Reduce, Reuse, Recycle;
  • Sharing ideas and skills to help prolong the use of everyday items rather than sending them to the bin;
  • Helping households adopt a more Climatarian diet and cut food waste;
  • Distributing surplus to reduce waste;
  • Educating the community about sustainable fashion; and
  • Supporting more use of existing circular infrastructure, such as our map of locations for second-hand items.

As we engage in this outreach, we also support infrastructure building which brings people together, connects communities, and reduces isolation. 

The Four Philosophical Pillars of WISH

WISH is built on four philosophical pillars that emerged from research in our pilot about how to make lasting changes in reducing waste and consumption in our community. Our partnership and work enhance activities and services in these pillars, and we recorded impressive accomplishments this year:

1. We connect people to each other 

Connection builds social resilience and creates a contagion effect that spreads good consumption and waste reduction habits. Our research has shown that increasing in-person social connection, in particular, helps the most to improve the wellbeing of those in our communities. Further, connecting with others over waste reduction is a major motivator for people who participate in our services. 

  • We engaged 19,860 individuals directly, in person.
  • Sixty percent of those individuals come back at least once per quarter, creating sticky engagement and helping to build a lasting community.
  • We recorded 27,508 total engagements when including digital engagement on the web and social media shares.
  • 538 people volunteered with us across Cherwell Collective’s programmes, including 324 through our WISH programme.
We know that connection to other people is a powerful motivation to participate in sustainable behaviors. When we surveyed participants on why they participate, the second most common answer was “to be part of a broader movement of people who want to reduce waste locally.”

2. We decrease waste

When we divert items from landfill, the community can enjoy them for longer.  When we prevent food waste, those in need can eat, and it helps reduce the 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions attributable to food waste. Waste reduction also helps enable our third pillar, reducing consumption, by keeping items in circulation and reducing the need to purchase new items.

  • We diverted 462,000 kg of waste from landfill.
  • We diverted 834 kg worth of textiles and clothing from landfill.
  • 9,525 kg of household waste was diverted.
  • We composted 52,379 kg of food waste, helping to reduce methane production at landfills. Methane is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

3. We decrease consumption

Supply chains producing food and household goods are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions globally. By helping to reduce unnecessary consumption, we not only do our part to solve the climate crisis, we also help those in our community build economic resilience during the cost of living crisis. 

  • We helped to recirculate 5,627 household items
  • We estimate that we saved 4,678Kw of energy use.
  • We lowered the community carbon footprint by 1,009 tonnes (4.6 million car mile equivalents of Carbon Cost saved)

4. We connect people to nature:

By increasing the amount of community green space and engaging people in outdoor activities, we connect people to nature. Our partnership also helps the community learn to preserve nature and biodiversity. Our research shows that spending time in nature can increase the connectedness people feel to nature. 

We also have shown that being connected to nature is related to more sustainable consumption habits. 

  • 1,574 people attended outdoor engagement activities.
  • We improved 4,649 square meters of outdoor community space.
  • We grew 2,560 kg of food.
  • We helped use 143,000 kg of woodchips.

Continuous Improvement Model Through Ongoing Evaluations

As part of our high standards for delivering impactful programmes that serve the community, we conduct ongoing evaluations of our services through a team at WISH.  We conducted a baseline survey from March to May of 2024 in which we collected over 400 responses.  The survey, as well as a series of more in-depth interviews, help us understand our users and their needs. It also helps us modify our programs to best support our four philosophical pillars and build lasting change.

Our big findings this year relate to well-being. We have strong evidence that connections influence well-being. Though social connection and nature connection are not statistically related to one another, they are both related to well-being. What’s more? Climate agency is also related to well-being. Moving forward, we are thinking about well-being as a combination of connections and agency. In the graph below the size of the circles within the larger well-being circle reflect the strength of the relationship between those measures in our survey.

Carbon Cost of Fashion: Our 2024 Highlight

While community members know that things like transport, home heating, and electricity use can contribute to climate change, an understanding of the role of fashion and clothing in climate change is only just emerging. Notably, scientific estimates suggest 8% of all climate change emissions come from clothing production.  We made fashion’s impact on climate a central part of our mission in 2024.

At WISH, we hosted multiple events centered on clothing sustainability.  These included repair workshops and clothing swaps.  Both kinds of events help community members learn how to participate in the circular economy regarding their wardrobes.  We also created an exhibit to increase carbon literacy around fashion.  While the exhibit will ultimately reside permanently at WISH headquarters, it spent the latter months of 2024 touring various locations in Oxfordshire.  If you want a sample of what we teach in the exhibit, you can take our online sustainable fashion quiz.

As a highlight of our sustainable fashion efforts, we hosted the Oxfordshire hub of Sustainable Fashion Week in September 2024. Our highlight event during the week was our Re:Fashion sustainable fashion runway show hosted by Blenheim Palace. The runway show included collaborations with organizations such as Iraqi Women Art and War (IWAW) and Multaka Oxford, which enabled women from numerous global backgrounds to create and showcase garments they made using sustainable materials and techniques.

What Comes Next for Cherwell Collective?

As we reflect on our successes we also acknowledge barriers and consider how we can overcome challenges in the next year. One of the biggest challenges we face is that living more sustainably is perceived to be too expensive for people. We know our work helps people understand the cost savings of reducing waste and consumption, and with that, improves well-being. In the next year we will increase these efforts to reduce barriers to climate agency, as we know that has the added value of increasing well-being as a result. 

We are excited for several major developments in 2025.

1. New Website Coming: In January 2025, our new website will launch. We aim to make it easier to navigate and to have a centralized repository of all our events easily searchable. We will help provide infrastructure to empower people to reduce waste and consumption through our learn articles and posts on our blog, Our Collective Thoughts.

2. WISH Headquarters Renovations: Early in 2025, we will briefly close our WISH headquarters to conduct a badly needed renovation.  The renovation will help open more space for our community engagement and learning activities. It will also upgrade our kitchen to help sustain the services of Climatarian Kitchen while providing a stable location for the Cherwell Larder Marketplace where people can directly save costs and surplus!

3. Oxfordshire Good Waste Charter: During the entire year, we will be engaging local businesses in development of the Oxfordshire Good Waste Charter. This strategic regional waste strategy will help institutionalize business and civic habits that reduce waste. 

4. New Carbon Cost Tools: We will be introducing new tools and resources around Carbon Cost – the way you can measure the greenhouse gas consequences of your consumer habits.

5. Focus on Climate Literacy: Our new Carbon Cost tools will be part of our overall efforts to increase climate literacy through a combination of written resources, climate exhibits like our sustainable fashion exhibit, in-person events, and engaging interactive quizzes and materials. 

Support Cherwell Collective in 2025

We know many groups will be asking for your support this time of year but please do consider helping our 2025 goals. 

  • If you have time to share, we are seeking volunteers to help us distribute surplus, cook community meals, and help us build an inclusive and fair waste strategy.  Sign up here. 
  • If you have resources to share, we are also raising funds for new equipment, uniforms, training, and longer lasting flooring for our renovation. No gift is too small. Give here.