Love Thame, Hate Waste

Overview

This umbrella campaign has been developed to help educate and enable Thame residents and businesses to reduce their waste and, by doing so, save money and have a substantial positive environmental and social impact. We want to inspire and empower everyone in Thame to take care of our resources and cut down what we waste.

Our consumer society in the UK has increasingly come to produce more than we collectively need: we frequently buy more than we require, all protected by varying quantities of packaging that is usually thrown away, and we have moved away from a ‘repair society’ towards a ‘throw-away society’. This not only has a substantial environmental impact, but is at a time when increasing numbers of people in the UK live below the poverty line (estimated to be more than 14 million). The long term goal of the Thame Green Living Plan is to move Thame to become a more circular society.

Objectives

• Reduce the supply of and use of single use plastics (businesses, schools and consumer) measured by achieving Plastic Free Thame and Plastic Free Schools status, and establishing town-wide reusable and recyclable coffee cup scheme
• Reduce litter – with a team of ‘wombles’ regularly picking up litter and educating children in schools about importance for environment of not dropping litter
• Increase Terracycle collections, through additional collection points and increased number of products by end 2021
• Reduce amount of food wasted, through Thame Community Larder, increased use of sharing apps such as Too Good to Go and Olio, and family food waste challenge with Zero Carbon Haddenham.

Impact

• Launched campaign in December 2020 with Love Thame Hate Waste at Christmas communications
• Supported set up and ongoing operation of Thame Wombles, who have picked up approx 4 tonnes of litter from Thame and surrounding areas in their first 3 months
• Connected together over 10 existing local organisations and individuals working on waste initiatives, involving food, packaging and litter.
• New pen recycling collection point set up at Glynswood (by Keira Booth)

Next steps

• Expansion of Terracycle initiatives post lockdown
• Production of guide to running sustainable events
• Become certified Plastic Free Community through Surfers Against Sewage scheme
• Exploring how to instil a reusable coffee cup culture in Thame, and ensure single use cups are recycled
• Set up family food waste challenge with Zero Carbon Haddenham