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As temperatures start to rise and daylight begins to stretch long into the evening, summer brings both opportunities and challenges for your home and garden. Luckily, preparing for summer can be sustainable, and it isn’t about making expensive upgrades or major renovations. With just a few practical adjustments, you can ensure you’re working in harmony with seasonal changes for a beautiful and unforgettable summer.

By preparing your home now, you can stay comfortable during hot weather, reduce water use during dry spells, and lower your energy use, all while saving money on bills at the same time. Here are four enjoyable ways you can make this summer season more sustainable.

Give your summer gear some TLC

Some items are particularly handy in summer, but might miss out on essential TLC during the winter months. If there’s anything you think you’re likely to use, now is a great time time to get them out of storage and clean them up or repair them if needed. For example, you may need to sand, oil, or repaint garden furniture, deep clean an umbrella for shade, or ensure the tyres and brakes on your bike are working properly. If you need any tools to help with this, there’s SHARE Oxford’s Library of Things. You could also pop into a repair café for help fixing your items or to access specialist repairs from volunteers.

Plan ahead for summer events

All sorts of fun social events and activities happen in summer, and hiring or borrowing is a great way to save money rather than buying things you’ll only use once or twice. Consider:

• Garden party equipment such as gazebos, games and decorations.
• Camping and travel gear like roofboxes, backpacks and tents.
• Air beds and mattresses for visitors.

Many of these items can be rented through SHARE Oxford’s Library of Things.

Clothing rental services are easily overlooked, but it’s worth using this option if you need to find an outfit for a one-off event like a summer wedding or garden party – according to research shared by Dunelm, fast fashion accounts for 10% of carbon emissions. Here in Oxford we have convenient local options like Ballroom Emporium or Moss Bros for formalwear, or you might try an online provider like One Hit Wonders for a little bit of everything.  If you’re not able to find the perfect item, you could ask friends and family if they have anything suitable – you never know what they might have in their wardrobe!

Add exterior shade to your home

Adding exterior shade is an effective and affordable way to keep your home cool, without costing the environment. Simple solutions include planting seasonal plants and trees, like climbing plants, which will help to block the sunlight during summer but will allow light through in winter when the leaves have fallen. Even smaller changes, like positioning large potted plants in front of doors, can help. Using plants where you can to create shade will also provide essential habitats for wildlife to thrive.

You can also install awnings, blinds, or shutters to stop heat from getting in. Even if you buy them brand new, they’ll still be a far more sustainable option than running a fan or air conditioner in the long term. If you’re able to buy them second-hand, you’ll be supporting a circular economy – and that’s even better!

Easy insulation and ventilation wins

While insulation is often associated with keeping properties warm in winter, it also helps to slow the transfer of heat into your home when temperatures rise, particularly through the loft and roof. Start by draught-proofing your home, by sealing gaps around windows, doors, loft hatches and pipework to prevent warm air from drifting inside – this helpful guide from the Centre for Sustainable Energy explains how you can do it yourself. Next, ensure your loft insulation is adequate and evenly laid, as this is one of the most impactful upgrades for year-round comfort. 

Pair this with smart ventilation by opening windows on opposite sides of the house during cooler evenings or early mornings to create cross-breezes, then close windows and draw curtains or blinds before the day heats up. This will help to stabilise indoor temperatures naturally, further reducing reliance on mechanical cooling and lowering your energy bills.

Preparing for greener months ahead

Preparing your home and garden for summer is ultimately about creating spaces that can adapt to heat, dry weather and heavier seasonal use without demanding more energy or resources. Small, preventative actions taken early can often have the greatest impact, helping you avoid reactive fixes. By maintaining and repairing what you have, borrowing what you only need occasionally and making strategic improvements that work in harmony with the world around you, you can reduce waste while increasing your comfort.

Preparing your home for summer can be simple. Whichever little tweaks you’ve chosen to make around your home and garden, we hope you enjoy the benefits throughout the summer season!

Got old or broken electricals sitting in a drawer? There are plenty of easy ways to repair, reuse or recycle them locally, and HypnoCat and the Recycle Your Electricals team can help you find your best option.

Discarded electricals is the fastest-growing waste stream in the UK. But the good news is that anything with a plug, battery or cable can be reused or recycled and turned into something new, from children’s playgrounds to lifesaving medical equipment.

So, whether it is an unwanted laptop, a cracked phone or a tangle of cables, here is how to find the best option for your unwanted tech.

Keeping electricals in use with SHARE

There are plenty of ways we can help you keep your electricals alive and well for longer here at SHARE Oxford.

Fix it: You can bring broken electricals to one of our monthly repair cafes at Makespace in Jericho, where we have a skilled repair team who are dedicated to fixing electricals of all kinds. You’d be amazed at how much can be fixed and we can advise if we’re not able to solve problems on the day.

Fix IT: If it’s IT that you need help with, the teams at our monthly tech rescue sessions at Makespace or with OCA in Blackbird Leys can help. We unpick software problems, speed up older computers that have started to creak or help diagnose or advise on hardware trouble. We can also help with wiping your data if you’re done with a device, whether planning to donate or recycle it.

Pass it on: if you have working electricals you no longer need, we accept donations of IT which we either pass on to Getting Oxfordshire Online or sell to raise funds. And whilst we are limited in what we can handle ourselves, we’re happy to help you find a partner to donate stuff to.

Find out more about or book your slots at https://shareoxford.org/repair/ 

Lots more great local electrical repair options

We’re one of a growing number of repair cafes across Oxford and Oxfordshire, most of which are well equipped to repair and revive your old electricals and tech. Check out the Repair Café Oxfordshire website to find a café at a location and time that suits you!

We also want to give a shout out to the electrical, computer and phone repair shops that do a great job keeping things working and saving money. Some local companies we’ve had great service from include Repair My Phone Today, GigaFix and Computer Assistance, or Talmages Domestic Appliances for white goods. If we’ve missed your local electrical repair business, do let us know and we’ll add you in!

Finding a new home for your electricals

If you’re finished with your electrical items, whether they’re working or not, here are some great projects which will get them working if possible and find them a new home

• Bicester Green and Orinoco Scrapstores (in Banbury and Templars Square Oxford) accept donations of small electricals which they will then inspect, repair, and resell in their stores. 

• For IT, the Getting Oxfordshire Online teams at SOFEA in Didcot and Aspire in Oxford accept donations of working laptops (up to 12 years old), smartphones and tablets (up to 6 years old), and all brick phones, securely wiping them and providing refurbished tech to individuals who otherwise wouldn’t have easy access to it. 

• We can also help out here at SHARE if you have older or broken tech. For £10/device (£20 for desktops), we are happy to help you securely wipe your data and pass your old tech on for sale or for free in the local community.

When it’s time to recycle

There are a variety of routes to recycling your electricals. Oxford City Council offers small electricals collections free of charge for many households, and bulky waste collection for a charge of £22 – £33 per item. For small electrical collections, you simply need to place the item in a clear bag on top of your bin on collection day, with the batteries removed and separated. For bulky waste collection, call Oxford City Council on 01865 249811 to book a collection slot. Many electrical retailers will also accept e-waste for recycling too.

Searching for your best option

With all these routes to choose from, Recycle Your Electricals (and HypnoCat’s) Postcode Locator is a great way to find your nearest and most convenient recycling or reuse option.

In Oxfordshire we are also lucky to have the County Council’s Waste Wizard, which shows your options for all sorts of waste from mattresses to paint, not just electricals.

If you are donating or selling working tech, it’s important to correctly and safely destroy your data first – our Tech Rescue team can help or check out this data deletion guide, produced in collaboration with the National Cyber Security Centre and We Fight Fraud.

We hope HypnoCat has inspired you to have a clear-out of that ‘drawer of doom’ filled with old, broken or unwanted electricals. Maybe your old phone could help someone in your community, maybe we can help you wipe your ancient laptop so an eBay customer will love playing their old games on it, or maybe it’s as simple as popping them on top of your bin for recycling so the precious materials in it can be made into the next widget! If you have any questions or want advice on what to do with your electricals, do get in touch!

The Recycle Your Electricals Campaign

Recycle Your Electricals is a UK-wide behaviour change campaign that encourages and makes it easier for everyone to keep their unwanted electricals in circulation rather than contributing to the staggering amount of e-waste that already exists. Using the Recycling postcode Locator on the Recycle Your Electricals website, it’s easy to find a great variety of local organisations that will repair, reuse, or recycle your electricals. 
The campaign is led by Material Focus, an independent not-for-profit organisation funded through the UK’s Extended Producer Responsibility regulations. They’re on a mission to stop the valuable, critical and finite materials inside electricals from going to waste.

Our partners at WISH have put together a short survey to learn how to better help our community.

It should only take 10 minutes, and will make a huge difference in the network’s ability to meet community needs and understand the impacts of our work.

To say thank you, they’ll enter you to win a £50 voucher to socialsupermarket.org! They’re giving three away.

More about the survey

We’re part of WISH – a county-wide partnership run for and by local communities, supported by The National Lottery Community Fund. We’re one of a few core partners helping create change through connecting communities to nature and to each other.

To respond to what people in the community want, the WISH team would like to hear more about who you are, and what you think and do around the environment, shopping and waste. Your responses will help them paint a picture of our local community and know how to best focus our partnership efforts. They are repeating this survey over time to help us assess the impact we are all having through WISH. If you have filled this survey in before, we would appreciate you doing it again.

Thank you!

Ben joined more than 100 repair groups from across the UK last week for the 3rd Parliamentary Repair Café, organised by the Restart Project and BackMarket.

The day aimed to raise awareness of the Repair and Reuse Declaration, policy objectives to help us all keep our stuff working and in use longer. We were thrilled to see more than 91 MPs and 11 staffers on the day, with more than 140 MPs now signed up to the declaration.

Growing Political Support

It was a great opportunity to catch up with the teams from Bicester Green and Hook Norton repair cafés and put faces to names from many further afield! Ben was also pleased to check in with local MP Anneliese Dodds, who offered some great tips and new connections. And it’s good to see MP Layla Moran on the list of signatories as well.

What comes next?

The Restart Project have put together a blog with more detail on the day and ongoing work happening at national level, linking up community action with the government’s imminent refresh of the Circular Economy Strategy. They pose some great challenges and suggestions for this work, including:

• reducing cost of repair
• catching up with repair legislation in Europe
• stopping working equipment being destroyed and recycled
• boosting repair skills

We’ve felt the growing energy for repair in our community here in Oxford, with more and more repair cafés and projects opening locally. It’s great to see so much happening nationally too. Let’s keep moving!

Have you heard of the Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre? Find out more about their free lending library dedicated to biological recording, and their upcoming “Noticing Nature” events, a great opportunity to connect with our local nature.

Explore this spring with free equipment and reference guides

TVERC’s lending library collection includes survey equipment, field guides, books, and maps. Whether you’re a seasoned recorder or just starting out, their resources are here to help you explore and document local biodiversity, including:

• Guidebooks and keys on numerous British species groups
• Books
• Field equipment such as beating trays and nets
• Bat detectors
• Moth trap

Click through to explore the full listing and see how to reserve equimpent:

If you’re keen to borrow some equipment, at this time of year, the TVERC Biodiversity Officer suggests you might like to check out Fritillaries at Iffley Meadows (or join their noticing nature event here on 27th April), Bluebells and other spring flowers in woodland. Orange-tip Butterflies and other spring emerging insects (e.g. bumblebees, bee-flies). Spring migrant birds – Swallow, singing Blackcap, Chiffchaff and the building dawn chorus. Watch out for Swifts towards the end of April/beginning of May.

Join a “noticing nature” event to learn together

After a successful first year, TVERC are planning another series of Noticing Nature events through the summer. Click through to find out when they’re near you!

We’re pleased to share our latest annual report, covering the year to June 2025.

We’re delighted with the growth in our Library of Things and work expanding reuse and skills. This year, the team have also put together some wonderful case studies which bring everything to life. Massive thank you to everyone who’s contributed to another exciting year for SHARE Oxford.

As ever, we’re grateful for any feedback or suggestions, so do get in touch if you’d like to share any thoughts.

You can also check out our previous years’ reports here.

We are excited to be partnering with a new community platform that is being built and piloted here in Oxfordshire this year! 

Redirect is a hyper-local platform and a community- and sustainability-first alternative to traditional social media. It is designed to help people redirect time, attention, and money away from the digital distractions of social media and online shopping and towards meaningful, local sustainability initiatives. Instead of impulse purchases and endless scrolling, the platform helps users discover community projects, events, and organisations active near them – and rewards engagement with real-world impact. 

Users can follow local organisations, attend events, support projects they care about, and connect with like-minded people in their area. Future features will allow users to track their individual impact and earn local experiences & rewards. For organisations like us, Redirect makes it easier to reach new and existing supporters, increase engagement, and build more resilient networks.

The vision is simple but powerful: stronger, climate-resilient communities, reduced consumption, and more funding and participation flowing into local sustainability efforts.

The platform is free to use. It already has 500+ Oxford-based events posted and is onboarding new users every day! 

🔗 Explore the platform, learn more (and sign up for SHARE’s 7th birthday party!) at https://redirectcommunity.uk 

Redirect’s Founder, Hannah Sassi, received her Master’s in Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment from the University of Oxford and is based here as a researcher. The idea for Redirect came from her belief in the importance of locally-led climate action and a desire to discover and highlight the amazing sustainability initiatives of community groups in places like Oxford. 

Hannah is currently looking for new users, gathering feedback, and building partnerships while she runs the Oxford pilot. If you’re interested in supporting, partnering, or simply following the journey, Hannah would love to hear from you. 

📩 Get in touch: hannah@redirectcommunity.com

Happy New Year! We hope you saw out 2025 in style.

This week, in between rubbing my eyes and double-taking at the news on my phone, I was inspired by this newsletter from environmental action charity Hubbub. They captured well how much great stuff is going on in the world of climate and nature, even if it can get lost in confusing times. They describe well how we care about this, we are getting on with change, and we’re finding new ways to have a great time. It’s worth a read.

From our viewpoint as a community organisation here in Oxfordshire, this feels so true. We’re a small team and learning loads as we go. We’re always motivated to help people connect with projects in this space that excite and inspire them. With this in mind, here are a few bits and bobs we’ve been either involved in or inspired by in the last few months, and can’t wait to see go further in 2026.

From big beasts…

• The University’s recently-opened Schwartzman Centre for the Humanities is potentially the largest building in the country to achieve Passivehaus. It’s been designed with a strong push for community connection as well as academic excellence and aims to be an open space for us all. I’m starting by trying out their café with our Chair of Trustees this week!
• There’s exciting progress on community connection at the Engineering Department; Nikita Hari, who among her many roles, leads their work on “Engineering in Practice”, has run their first break-down sessions with students. In the coming months, we hope to team up with repair café volunteers. This could build community and help students take this thinking into careers designing and building the products of the future.
• It was great to get to London in December to meet many inspiring people at the Green Alliance’s launch of this video series of circular economy success stories. A reminder of how much is going on around the country and beyond, and how we can get involved.

…to local heroes…

• The huge new Humanities building reminded me, on a different scale, what a fantastic job Cherwell Collective have done with their WISH store refurb in Kidlington. It was a really welcoming, smart place for our recent WISH network meeting. It’s worth popping in and asking to check out the solar panels, heat pumps, re-homed furnishings and more that make a sustainable home for this group’s future.
• Thinking of setting up for the future, it’s exciting to see the Getting Oxfordshire Online teams at SOFEA and Aspire moving to more self-funded model, selling a portion of donated devices to fund their work. This increases the service’s resilience to shifting funder priorities and offers a great new way to support them. If you are in the market for a computer or two, John and the team will help you get a great device and support your community in the process.
• A new area for us to learn, our volunteer Molly helped us understand better how reuse fits into our mission and who we could collaborate with. As a first step, we’ve been delighted to connect up a local business with reuse charity KFR. Their team in Swindon have collected the first van-load of unwanted white goods from sites in Oxford to be refurbished, safety-certified and distributed.

…this is an amazing community

• There was amazing energy in the room as we shared a meal at Makespace’s end of year party, reflecting all the progress they’ve made in building such a vibrant community. They’ve re-opened 31 buildings which host 276 organisations so far. It’s all underpinned by their powerful (re)founding work to stay focused on their mission to improve spatial justice.
• The informal network of UK Libraries of Things has taken a great step forward this year. The re-organised WhatsApp community now includes many more groups and helps people like us discuss all the important things in life like insurance and Mailchimp subscriber limits. It’s also a great place to celebrate progress like Leamington Spa’s new LoT opening, and SHARE Skipton winning a North Yorkshire Community Impact Award.
• Our Library of Things customers always inspire with the ideas they are trying out too. We meet people new to the city who are pleased that they don’t need to buy stuff. Others hire thermal cameras to find “quick fixes” to save energy. Some hire kit like beds for family visits, tackle those DIY fixes they’ve been meaning to for ages or create beautiful crafts. Your good nature and honesty also really helps us learn where we need to keep improving for our bit to work well (including apologies to those guests who wound up sleeping on a slowly deflating air bed this Christmas…)

With so many more great things going on than we’ve mentioned here, we hope you start 2026 energised to take next steps on the things you care about. If we can help in any way, please feel free to get in touch. Maybe we could link you up with Community Action Groups in your area, or you could pop in to chat through an idea with our staff and volunteers, feed back where you want to challenge us, share what’s inspiring you, or anything else.

And, of course, we’d love to help you start your year with some repairing, sharing or reusing at these upcoming sessions:

• Monday 12^th January – Tech Rescue to keep your IT working well, or help pass on your old gear if Santa brought a new laptop.
• Sunday 18^th January – Repair Café to fix electrical and mechanical things, bikes, clothes and this month even leather books.
• Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays – the Library of Things is open as usual for early spring cleans, January birthdays, DIY projects and all your other brilliant ideas.

See you soon, and wishing you a wonderful 2026!

Since 2021, Great Big Green Week has given communities across the UK the opportunity to celebrate and join in with activities that help reduce waste, protect nature, and tackle climate change. This year, the focus is on swapping – swapping stuff like clothes and books, but also plants and seeds, and even skills, helping people save money, extending the life of the things we use, reducing the amount of waste going to landfill, and bringing communities together.

“Let’s swap together for good”

Swapping is at the heart of what we do at SHARE Oxford: not only with our library of things to give people the opportunity to borrow items rather than buy them, but also repair cafes, where our lovely volunteers bring broken things back to life. For this year’s Great Big Green Week we want to focus on sharing skills – helping people develop new skills and the confidence to use them to fix their own stuff, and maybe even find a new hobby!

Learn sustainable skills this Great Big Green Week

If you’re keen to learn something new, here are some of the skills-focused events taking place in and around Oxford during the week:

Makespace Oxford Living Fibre weaving – Saturday 7 June, 10am – 12pm – part of a series with Fred Branson learning how to forage natural fibres, work them into cords and weave beautiful natural creations.

Tech Rescue – Monday 9th June, 11am-3pm – our volunteers can help you keep your old IT working smoothly, help you manage the move on from Windows 10 or prepare to pass on your unwanted devices to the community.

Woodwork tool sharpening with Lu from Oxford Furniture Makers – Thursday 12th June 11am-12:30pm – learn how to keep your tools in perfect condition and explore traditional woodworking techniques with Lu from Oxford Furniture Makers – bookings opening 19 May

Bike repair basics with Piotr from EOF Hackspace – Saturday 14th June, 11am – 2pm – Piotr will take you through the basics of servicing your bike and managing simple repairs so you have the confidence to keep it in great condition.

Broken spoke bike repair workshops – there are all sorts of options for learning bike repair with Broken spoke including slots during the week, or it’s a good option if you can’t make our session this week! 

Electrical repair basics at our repair café – Sunday 15th June, 2-5pm – alongside our usual “bring your stuff to fix” offering, our electrical repair team will be demonstrating some of the key steps for successful electrical repairs – eg opening things up carefully so they can go back together, checking for electrical continuity and the key basics of electrical safety. Check for the “electrical repair demo” slots at 2pm in our booking form.!

And the SHARE Oxford team is out and about

Our team will also be pleased to see you and talk about all things sharing and repairing at these events:

Makespace Oxford plant swap – Saturday 7 June, 11am – 2pm – bring along your plants and seeds that you want to swap with other growers. Also swap stories and knowledge of growing the plants you love.

THRIVE Oxford with Oxford Climate Collective – Saturday 7th June 10am – 4pm – a celebration of sustainable community showcasing local initiatives around the themes of food, travel, energy, nature and reducing waste. 

Oxford City Farm’s Great Big Green Week Celebration – Saturday 14th June 10am – 2pm – we’ll be with our friends from the WISH network sharing all sorts of activities and updates from across the network as we work to build a circular economy for Oxfordshire.

So much going on across the county!

You’ll find lots going on across Oxfordshire on the Great Big Green Week website and CAG Oxfordshire’s pages. Maybe it’ll inspire you to host something yourself. If you’d like us to help you put something on or spread the word, do get in touch.

We’re pleased to share the annual report for our most recent financial year to June 2024.

Opening three days a week helped drive a 30% increase in activity at our Library of Things, the repair team fixed more than 1 tonne of stuff, and we continued to develop partnerships and new activities, including all things Circular Economy with the WISH network and saving IT from the bin with Tech Rescue.

Whether you’re a volunteer, customer, partner or funder, thank you for the part you played in making it happen!

Read the full report here, and as ever, do feel free to get in touch with any questions or feedback.