Next month, we are beginning a public engagement process to develop a county-wide strategy on waste. This aims to co-create and design policy to support good waste practices in our region, centring the perspective of businesses, community members, and policymakers through Engagement Sessions.

We will be hosting a series of guided Engagement Sessions beginning in April. Each session will be a 3-part meeting to focus on the perspective of one of three groups: businesses, the local community, or policymakers. There will be multiple sessions for each of the three groups.

And importantly, free, delicious food will be involved!

We have released the dates for our first session at WISH, and subsequent community and business sessions at alternate locations will be released soon. These will be updated on the Good Waste Charter web page and on our Instagram and Facebook pages. You can also register here to be invited to future sessions and Good Waste Charter activities.

Community Session: WISH (OX5 1EE)
Wed 22nd April 10-12
Wed 6th May 10-12
Wed 20th May 10-12

Participants will be guided by a facilitator to share their pain points, solutions, questions, and thoughts around the given waste subject. Learnings from these sessions will be used to form a county-wide strategy for a Good Waste Policy in Oxfordshire.

Participants in a session are invited to attend three connected meetings to dive into their thoughts on the given waste topic.

Although years in the making, the Good Waste Policy consultation comes at a critical time for Oxfordshire. Despite having some of the best rates of recycling in the country, the problem of business waste is fresh on many people’s minds following the Kidlington waste dump that made international headlines last November.

‘Our framework for Good Waste Policy starts at the most fundamental level: waste policy, like any other services, must be open to all. Services and infrastructure must be accessible, consistent, and affordable.

‘In the case of our Kidlington landfill, infrastructure was not affordable, and the decisions made by a few local businesses to reduce overheads resulted in incalculable, irrecoverable costs for the taxpayer as well as the ecosystem,’ shares Cherwell Collective’s founder and Managing Director, Dr. Emily L. Connally.

The engagement process is a major step toward investing in and scaling community solutions in order to create the low carbon waste solutions our county needs. To date, many policies have focused on reducing household rubbish, which only accounts for 14% of total waste in the UK.

The Good Waste Policy engagement process aims to centre businesses as well as the community in highlighting needs, ideas, problems, and solutions. Businesses overwhelmingly support a movement toward circular pathways and reuse chains, which is also central to nationwide strategy for waste reduction.

This approach to creating policy comes with encouraging precedent: It draws inspiration from the 2021 Good Food Strategy that is currently in its implementation phase. It was led by Good Food Oxfordshire.who are part of WISH’s county-wide project build community connection to reduce consumption, funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.

Please visit cherwellcollective.com/good-waste-charter for up-to-date information. We hope to see you at an Engagement Session near you!