Communities and council win national recycling award
More than 100 community action groups (CAG Oxfordshire) and Oxfordshire County Council have scooped a national award for their joint efforts to improve recycling and reduce waste.
They won the partnership category at the 2024 Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee awards on 10 October.
The award recognises the work of the partnership, which has been going strong for over 20 years. It supports grassroots efforts to reduce, reuse and repair across Oxfordshire communities, and diverted around 2,000 tonnes of material from disposal in 2023/24.
Councillor Dr Pete Sudbury, Deputy Leader of Oxfordshire County Council with Responsibility for Climate Change, Environment and Future Generations, said: “It’s wonderful to see the strong partnership between Oxfordshire County Council and CAG Oxfordshire recognised at these national awards.
“Community groups play a crucial role in creating the social cohesion that is central to the resilience of societies when they are subject to sudden unpredictable shocks, like the pandemic, or increasingly extreme weather events. That's one of the reasons we doubled our funding support to the CAGs a year ago.
“We are delighted to support local communities to act on the environmental issues that matter to them. We would like to thank the 112 groups across the county for doubling their impact over the last year, holding 8,800 events, putting true sustainability and the circular economy into real world action and making a positive impact on the environment and society.”
Katherine Chesson, Director of CAG Oxfordshire, said: “We are proud of our ongoing partnership with Oxfordshire County Council as we've seen the network grow and flourish over that time.
“The partnership has allowed us to support the amazing volunteers and community champions advancing important environmental and social initiatives in every corner of the county. This award is as much a recognition of their efforts as it is our partnership.”
In 2023/24 the CAG network delivered near 9,000 events and activities thanks to the support of 220,000 volunteer hours – in both cases, double the impact of the previous year.
These activities resulted in approximately 1,654 tonnes of non-food waste being reused and repaired. Another 678 tonnes of food was diverted from waste to be redistributed, cooked, eaten or processed, preventing nearly 1,695 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Events and activities have included:
- A riverbank clean-up which collected over 100kg of plastic.
- Over Christmas, one community fridge redistributed more than 14 tonnes of surplus food to families in need.
- Cooking classes supported people to eat and buy more sustainably, exploring food miles, how to eat on a budget, and how to cook using surplus ingredients.
- Five ‘libraries of things’ and swap shops, which reused over three tonnes of products.
- Over 260 repair cafes.
- Refill shops and pop-ups helping to eliminate waste, including repairing more than 2,000 bikes.
The partnership enables the council to support local communities to tackle the issues that impact them. The enthusiasm of local communities championing the projects they have identified and developed helps to ensure their success, widen the impact and, in many cases, helps the initiatives grow.
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