Happy Earth Day! This is one of our favourite holidays at Cherwell Collective. Every day of the year our engaged community focuses on the positive ways that humans and nature can connect and support each other. So, to celebrate this important day we love to create conscious community gatherings. Our local communities are, after all, a beautiful part of Earth!

This year was no exception. On Saturday, we had the pleasure of welcoming dozens of new and familiar faces to our Earth Day Party. Earlier today, our Managing Director, Emily, led a panel discussion at Oxford Brookes.

Earth Day Party 2024

We hosted Saturday’s celebration at Park Hill, where Harvest @ Home has managed a greenspace garden for the past few years. You may have heard about this space from the giant unicorn living sculpture (#LivingSculptureKidlington) that we created for last year’s Earth Day and Coronation festivities. It made national headlines, and was a huge accomplishment for our community!

This year we returned to the garden for loads of Earth-loving activities. Feel free to use some of our ideas for your next eco party! Our activities included:

• A Tombola. We stocked this with entirely surplus gifts to keep them from going to waste!
• A Seedling Swap. Our Harvest @ Home project facilitated a fun space for visitors to exchange their seedlings for free. This helps bring variety to summer gardens and connects us with new, local friends.

• Selling repurposed goods and crafts. Our WISH products are all handmade by volunteers or staff from rubbish or surplus material that would have gone to landfill. It feels good to see the creations go to good homes. They make especially good eco gifts.
• Planting seeds. We sowed seeds in the Unicorn Living Sculpture, but you could try this anywhere you like.
• Scavenger hunt. This is a great way to get young friends involved in nature in an enjoyable way.
• Decorating a Gift Bag. Keep used gift bags in circulation by giving them new life. Our visitors loved adding personal touches to theirs.
• Seed bomb party favours. Guests took home ‘seed bombs’, or little packets of seeds that they could disperse in their gardens. 

• A drum circle. Around 30 children 60 adults (not including any volunteers) enjoyed our drum circle where we played together to celebrate the Earth. It’s a unique and very unifying experience that the community loved giving a try.

Loving Student Leftovers – Oxford Brookes

Our Managing Director Dr. Emily Connally teamed up with other local Earth-day super heroes to celebrate earlier today. She led a panel discussion in Oxford Brooke’s Love Student Leftovers Closing Event filled with incredible WISH Partners:  

• Good Food Oxfordshire Our local sustainable food network trying to shorten supply chains and push policy change to create and maintain vibrant and healthy communities with access to affordable, nutritious, and sustainable food. 
• Oxford Food Hub A local food distributor collecting surplus from dozens of businesses and keeping that food in circulation by providing food to over 200 charities organisations and community groups in Oxfordshire. 
• Replenish Oxfordshire  a Community Action group supporting cooking and growing by sharing skills and knowledge, running trainings, and supporting organisations to upskill volunteers to support more sustainable food handling from seed to soil!
• Waste2Taste A brilliant community cafe and catering company that inspires people with the beauty of food that would otherwise be wasted and also looks out for those in need by providing a freezer of love, the first of its kind that has even inspired a similar movement on Brooks campus. 

In addition, we heard from Brooks partners in India, including Kaajal Chhibber from the Sathee Foundation who coordinates surplus sharing whereby food from large celebrations is taken to areas of deprivation to support children who otherwise may have only one meal a day. Kaajal reminded us of the importance of returning to our roots and passing on knowledge around reducing waste to our children and young people. 

Previously a chef,  Dr Zubin D’souza spoke about how he has transformed the the Indian School of Hospitality into a zero waste facility where nothing is wasted and the traditional easy use kitchen plastics like cling film are not allowed. He had many practical tips around investing in long life storage containers to reduce this waste and had some absolutely inspirational words around respecting the resources of the planet and how unchecked waste is the hallmark of a society in decay. Talk about a call to action on Earth Day! 

Major themes of the panel included planning ahead, making sure to eat what you take, storing, and most of all: Sharing. Making a freezer or cupboard or fridge of love to share your surplus on and off campus to reduce waste and connect with one another. 

Our audience had great additions to the panel including what to do about the fast food waste and we’re leaving the event equipped with exciting new resources (like this Sustainable Food Guide) and can’t wait to put them into good use. We ended the panel with a discussion of the results of our Carbon Cost of Food week! 

Thanks to all the inspiring competition entries from students around the globe and to Brooks organisers for creating such a fantastic environment for discussion and learning.

An Invitation

There’s no better way to celebrate Earth Day than by getting involved in community action! Here’s a few ways you can give a bit back today – whether it be remotely or in-person!

If you prefer to help from home:

• Take our WISH Survey – this survey helps us evaluate how we can best support our community in reducing waste. It should only take around 10 minutes!
• Look over the Good Waste Charter – Flip through its 4 pages and register your support or feedback. This is our first draft of the charter, which we hope to use to bring positive policy change in Oxfordshire. We need to hear what the community thinks, and taking a few minutes to review and let us know your thoughts would be so helpful in moving this forward.
• Learn something new on the Blog – We’ve published loads of articles this year ranging from climate-friendly recipes to sustainable spring cleaning tips. Why not see if there’s something for you to learn?

If you’d like to get involved in person:

• Sign up to volunteer – There’s something for everyone, so don’t worry if you can only help out once a week (or per month!).
• Go outside for a little litter pick – The planet (and your neighbours) will be so pleased.

But most of all, have a happy Earth Day! We hope you can look at our beautiful world and be grateful and inspired as you celebrate today.