On Saturday, 14 June 2025, Cherwell Collective participated in a finale celebration for Great Big Green Week. The event at Oxford City Farm marked the culmination of a weeklong series of environmentally focused activities in the local region, which mirrored those happening simultaneously across the UK.

The Great Big Green Week finale event included a wide array of activities for participants to enjoy.

The UK’s Great Big Green Week 2025 brings together an estimated million people across the nation for “a wave of actions for friends, family, climate, and nature.” In doing so, the shared goal is to “send a message loud and clear to our politicians and decision makers that we need to swap old ways for better ways, now,” according to the organisation’s website.

We set up a variety of stalls and exhibitions, engaging with 90 visitors during the event. Various organizational partners were also present, including Oxford Food Hub, Share Oxford, TVERC, and Wild Oxfordshire.

Learn how your organization can partner with Cherwell Collective.

Food, Glorious Sustainable Food

As is typical of many of our in-person events, one of our primary focuses was food and its role in climate change. We brought along a variety of foods from Cherwell Larder to share with participants. By drawing in people with our food offerings, we hope to create an opportunity to engage individuals about issues like how to adopt a more climatarian diet.

Participants were surprised by what they learned from our exhibition on the Carbon Cost of food. Many participants said they weren’t aware that dairy items such as cheese can have a very high carbon cost — even greater than various animal proteins such as pork, chicken, and fish. Others didn’t realize that chocolate, a plant-based food that many assume to be low-carbon, also carries a high Carbon Cost.

In our discussions around food, we introduced participants to two of our five key principles to living a more climatarian lifestyle:

  • Buy less but better: For instance, you can consume less cheese, a high-carbon-cost dairy product. Then, use the money you save by buying cheese less often to spend on a higher-quality cheese you enjoy for special occasions.
  • Shop surplus first: A great way to reduce waste of any kind of item is to “shop surplus,” which can include visiting a local larder that gives away excess food from grocers, restaurants, and caterers that can’t make use of it. It doesn’t just help save the planet, it saves you money.

Plant A Seed Today and Reap What You Sow

One way that people become more knowledgeable about food, thoughtful about what they eat, and able to eat more locally is by growing their own!  To help individuals grow more of their own food at home, our Harvest @ Home program distributed seed packets to participants.  The seed packets had been assembled by our work placement students who had spent the preceding work week with us.

One inspired volunteer highlighted the benefits of growing one’s own food: “It’s good to have your own vegetables. You know how they grow. You know where they’re coming from. And you know, they’re like a more natural, more organic way to get vegetables.” 

The event’s location at Oxford City Farm provided the ideal backdrop for these ideas and conversations. One volunteer noted that the farm acts as “a good sort of conversation starter” for discussing environmental topics with her children.   Another parent noted that it is simply always enjoyable to bring her children to the farm, see the animals, and let her kids feed them. 

Oxford City Farm provides a backdrop to learn about local plants and animals.

Denim Guy and Sustainable Fashion

Another crowd favorite that draws visitors to our booths is our sustainable fashion “Denim Guy”. The mannequin, dressed in denim, is covered with facts about the extreme water consumption associated with manufacturing denim and fabrics in general. Visitors can interact with quiz cards hung from the mannequin to learn some surprising facts:

  • Making a single pair of jeans uses more water than the average person drinks in 10 years (7500 liters).
  • Be informed: Shopping for organic cotton can reduce water usage by 90%. Naturally dyed fabrics can eliminate toxic water pollution.
  • Textile dyes and treatments are responsible for 20% of global water pollution.

Our exhibition on sustainable fashion helps reveal another area in which “shopping surplus first” can help the planet. We explained how buying second-hand clothing, such as jeans like those on Denim Man, helps keep them in circulation for longer and reduces the demand on supply chains for manufacturing new ones.  With an estimated 8% of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the fashion industry, reducing surplus shopping can go a long way in helping to cut emissions.

To help visitors shop for surplus, we provided QR code links to our Sustainable Shopping Map (sometimes also referred to as the “second-hand map” within our community and among volunteers), which shows the locations of places in Oxfordshire that offer access to second-hand appliances, clothing, and home & décor items. Buying second-hand and helping keep items in circulation for longer is a great way to participate in the Circular Economy.

Save the date: Great Big Green Week 2026 will take place from 6 to 14 June 2026.

One of our takeaways from the event is that in order to participate in and set up in-person exhibitions, as well as provide food surplus from Cherwell Larder, we need more volunteers, especially to help us with load-in or load-out.  If you would like to volunteer, please visit our volunteer page to share your contact information and learn about current opportunities.