1997 Charlbury Area Waste Action Group (CAWAG) was formed
Arose due to so much local interest in improving recycling as revealed by Charlbury Town Appraisal
Charlbury became a pilot for recycling within West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC)
CAWAG became a community action group and part of Oxfordshire’s CAG Network which now links more than 60 groups.
Bring OR Takes twice a year, after 25 years these have become phenomenally popular and are a main event in Charlbury's calendar
A-Z Recycling Guides published (two editions) and provided to every household in Charlbury
Monthly central collections of paper and green waste prior to these being collected by WODC from each household, annual collection of Yellow Pages telephone directories, also Christmas Trees for shredding centrally by WODC
Regular central collections of tools, wood, and paint for reuse
CAWAG evolved as WODC began collecting more things for recycling
2007 Regular stall held at quarterly Farmers Markets in Charlbury, an opportunity to provideinformation and talk to people
2007 Low Energy Lightbulb Library for people to try out bulbs, loaned it to Sustainable Charlbury and other communities, library was dismantled and sample bulbs given away as low-energy lightbulbs became widely adopted
2007 Battery collection boxes set up in convenient buildings in Charlbury which we then took to the battery bin provided by OCC at Dean Pit - over 130,000 batteries were collected before we were able to be discontinue the scheme in 2010 after legislation eventually changed to make shops selling large numbers of batteries responsible for collecting them and collection boxes were provided at our local Co-op supermarket
2007 Monthly collection of Tetra Paks centrally in Charlbury for taking to the Tetra Pak skip provided by OCC at Dean Pit, over 332,000 Tetra Paks were collected before were able to discontinue the scheme in 2011when Tetra Paks were eventually able to be put in our black boxes for recycling
2007 Secure Paper Shredding organised twice a year has so far raised £1,500 for local causes and shredded the equivalent of 100 trees
2007 Published A-Z Quick Guide with information about Reduce, Re-use and Recycling and provided to every household in Charlbury
2007 Display information at annual Wychwood Fair - ranging from a nature trail at Cappp's Lodge interspersed with escalating quotes from Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, to the panoramic display over the Evenlode valley from the site north of Leafield interspersed with quotes from the 1875-1900 diaries of local farmer John Calvertt published as Rain and Ruin
2008 Public talk in Charlbury about Oxfordshire County Council's proposed incinerator at Ardley versus Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT)
2008 Started working with Oxfordshire Master Composters scheme to encourage people to compost at home, this was before food waste started to be collected by WODC for anaerobic digestion at Cassington
2008 Started using Love Food Hate Waste promotional material and ideas to reduce food waste
2008 Charlbury Sharecroppers initiative created for sharing growing space in gardens and sharing apples, this has developed into the annual Big-Apple TakeAways and also found the land for Chadlington Kitchen Garden which started in 2016
2009 Made the first Sharecroppers Gold Cider from local waste apples and in 2010 gave it free to the Charlbury Beer Festival for them to sell and raise money, since thenMore about us have provided 32 barrels (approx 160 gallons) to CBF, Riverside Festival and Wychwood Fair.
2009 Frock Swaps for reusing clothes, first of several in Charlbury and other nearby communities. Now there are regular sales of second hand clothes organised by local comunity groups in Charlbury to raise money for various causes.
2010 Stainless Steel Travel Mug produced to commemorate the doubling of the railway line at Charlbury
2010 Spring Feast & Ceilidh and a Big Lunch held in June - Bring & Share community feasts, also helped organise a Jubilee Big Lunch in 2012
2011 Carbon Conversations training to have conversations with people and help them make changes to their lives to reduce their impact on world resources and climate change
2011 Published leaflets CO2 What Can I Do? and Smarter Driving which were made available at local events
2011 Video & Audio Cassettes - bulk collections for recycling at Bristol (until 2015 when the company stopped the service)
2011 Bike Repairs - regular visits organised several times each year from Back on Trax the mobile cycle repair company
2011 Tool Sharpening - regular monthly visits on a Saturday morning in the spring/summer from someone providing this service
2011 Thermal imaging using WODC camera - each winter we have borrowed the camera to help people reduce the heat lost from their homes
2011 Bras & Spectacles - regularly collect these at Bring & Takes and at the Farmers Market stall, take bras to Oxfam and spectacles to local opticians for VisionAid
2011 VHS tapes - collected thousands of these for recycling at Bristol until the company stopped handling them, also collected CDs locally to take to OCC's recycling point at Dix Pit
“We aim to promote a better understanding of our local countryside, food, energy, travel, and the wider implications for our planet's limited resources and climate change” We continue to provide opportunities for individuals in our local community to take part in events where individual actions might be small, but which collectively have a much bigger impact on the environment
Revamped Charlbury Green Hub website to reflect these wider interests and a major new section on our local countryside - the subject pages provide an index of links in reverse date order to interesting articles elsewhere on the web, this structure means that the website can easily be continually updated with fresh information - if you want to recommend a good link then please contact us
Articles in Charlbury Chronicle published quarterly, regularly provide articles about environmental issues and personal accounts of lifestyle changes
Green Open Homes - organised various local homes to take part in this nationally advertised event for visitors to come for inspiration about houses and lifestyles
Scything - training people to use Austrian Scythes to cut the wilder parts of gardens, nature reserves, and verges rather than using fossil-fuel strimmers
Cooking Demonstrations - family favourites, sourdough bread, fermenting, cider-making - to inspire people to cook from scratch and enjoy real food rather than packaged processed foods - if you want to know more please contact us
Bookshare for sharing environmental books around the community with a selection available at Charlbury's quarterly Farmers Markets on our regular stall
List of things for shared use that can be borrowed locally to avoid duplicates being purchased and only used periodically
Bring OR Takes continue twice a year and are a huge success, include household items, kitchenware, toys, books, tools, small items of furniture, office stationery, clothes, seed swaps, christmas decorations, bikes, paint and electrical items with a CE mark that are PAT tested at the event before being made available. Also collect bras, spectacles for reuse; batteries, charcoal water filters and used light-bulbs for recycling. VOLUNTEERS ALWAYS WELCOME to help at the beginning and the end of this event.
Big Apple Take-Aways are hugely popular throughout the autumn and in 2017 we were awarded the OCVA Environment Award to encourage other communities to follow our model, this includes cider-making for the local summer festivals
Secure Paper Shredding events continue in May and November to raise money for the Charlbury Community Centre Appeal and to fund hiring the Memorial Hall for our Bring & Takes
We still help and advise about recycling at the summer festivals in Charlbury and WELCOME VOLUNTEERS who care about recycling and who get some satisfaction from achieving minimal general waste
In March 2017, took part in 'Only One Earth' - a series of illustrated talks during Lent on environment and faith and the theme of stewardship for our world, held at St Mary's Church, Charlbury
Until Covid, we had information displays and demonstrations at the Wychwood Fair each September, each year the theme of the display changes: connections to wildlife and countryside, lifestyles now and in the past, recycling, growing food, climate change, impact of holidays, addiction to fast changing fashion, addiction to sugar and health issues, wood as fuel and what is a comfortable room temperature, food waste and food issues - able to meet people who live further afield and talk about the environmental issues that concern them
Tool Sharpening service organised in Charlbury once a month in late spring and early summer each year
Thermal imaging camera borrowed from WODC each winter to carry out surveys for people who are keen to see where their houses are losing heat - if you want to know more please contact us
Working on Food Waste issues, we then launched OLIO in March 2018 to enable Charlbury to reduce food waste within our community, but found it didn't work well in a rural area and helped set up a physical community larder at The Cornerstone instead.
From November 2018 we started providing SESI detergent refills , initially at the new (but short-lived) monthly market in the Memorial Hall and at the quarterly farmers markets. Since COVID-19 restrictions in March 2020 it has become a weekly drop-off and collection service at the Styan veg collection and this has worked well.
December 2019 we took part in St Mary's first Christmas Tree Festival inside the church and provided a tree with decorations made from recycled materials and inspirational ideas for people to take to reduce their impact on the environment. The next two years saw the festival outside because of COVID-19 restrictions and we provided trees with the themes of what hedgehogs would want for Christmas and where insects and wildlife go in the winter.
From March 2020 (when finding fresh veg at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was very difficult) we've organised a pop-up collection point every Saturday for farmers market produce ordered online from Styan Family Produce. The comission we receive for organising the collection goes towards financing fresh local eggs and vegetables for the local families in need who are provided with food each week by The Cornerstone. We also operate our SESI detergent refill service from here, people drop off their empty bottles and collect them the following week.
In August 2020 we helped launch The Cornerstone at the Corner House in Charlbury to provide a larder for free food for everyone in Charlbury to benefit from spare food within the community. With COVID-19 restrictions preventing our normal fortnightly Big Apple Take-Aways in the autumn we were able to transfer the Sharecropper apple and fruit harvest to be available from the Cornerstone all through the week after being freshly picked.
In September 2020 we launched the Charlbury Repair Network to repair items that can't be repaired elsewhere and would otherwise be thrown away.
Since June 2022 people can now follow us on Instagram.
If you have an idea that you would like to progress in Charlbury, and need some support to make it happen, then please contact us
RECOMMENDED BOOKS:
Email bookshare@charlburygreenhub.org.uk to borrow any of these books owned by Charlbury people:
Garden waste recycling - sign up now! From April 2017 household garden waste collections from West Oxfordshire District Council will cost £30 per bin, per year. To receive this fortnightly service, you will need to sign up. This can be done quickly and easily online with your credit or debit card. Alternatively, call 01993 861025.
Do you have mistletoe in your garden? Complete this simple form online to record your findings . Survey to produce a baseline to assess possible changes in the distribution of mistletoe due to predicted future climate change effects. So far mistletoe has been found on approximately 900 trees in southern Oxfordshire, with approximately 3,300 mistletoe clumps noted.
The Living Ash Project is asking members of the public to report information about the health of ash trees, especially those that may have some tolerance to Chalara (ash dieback).
