Oxfordshire Reuses Event

On June 16th 2019 Oxfordshire councils working in partnership took over Oxford Town Hall for a zero-waste festival. Highlights included a swap shop, repair café, clothes upcycling demo, children’s upcycling workshop, surplus food café, stalls (including Freegle) and Freegle’s Cat Fletcher was there to open the event as well as give two talks about Freegle and her portfolio of work on reuse, including her role as Reuse Manager for Brighton and Hove City Council.

The event was a great success with around 650kg of items swapped or repaired.

"Thank you so much once again for your involvement, it’s made such a huge difference and wonderfully raised the profile of the event!" Alexandra Mates, Recycling Promotions Officer for Oxford Direct Services.

"Thank you for all your help with our Oxfordshire Reuses event, it was a huge success and having Cat there was fantastic. Her talk was really inspirational and it was amazing to hear about all the great work she has done so thank you for helping us get her there!"Becky Kenton Lake, Waste Strategy Projects Officer, Oxfordshire County Council.

Cumbria County Council’s partnership working with Freegle

Penrith and Eden Freegle has been working successfully with Cumbria County Council for many years and in 2015 were together shortlisted for a National Recycling Award. An interesting summary of their work can be found here and a detailed case study will be available soon.

Social media

Essex regularly run social media campaigns featuring Freegle, here is an example:

Websites

The Love Essex website has a section on donating items, which you could replicate for your council.

Oxfordshire County Council have created a Waste Wizard which directs residents to repair, reuse and recycling options, including pointing people towards Freegle. This is a really easy way to let people know about Freegle and other similar organisations that help maximise reuse locally.

Leaflets

This double-sided A5 publicity leaflet designed by Freegle volunteers in Cumbria can be copied and edited in Canva.com:

https://www.canva.com/design/DAB4sdNw7yA/crZcKPhzyEH3Yfz0ZaGdxg/view

The Penrith & Eden Freegle website in part of Cumbria has newsletters and articles which can be used as templates by for other councils. https://www.penrithedenfreegle.org.uk/

Posters

Essex County Council produced these posters

Local magazine articles

Cumbria County Council has featured Freegle in its Your Cumbria magazine for households

Give and Take Day publicity

Penrith and Eden Freegle in partnership with Cumbria County Council regularly run Give and Take days – here is one of their press releases which you can use and adapt for similar events you might run.

Penrith and Eden Freegle in partnership with Cumbria County Council have produced leaflets for their regular ‘Give and Take’ events which can be used as templates by other councils:

Videos

Essex and Cumbria County Councils have produced a series of videos showing residents how to make best use of Freegle. You can find these in our videos section.

Cumbria County Council have also produced this child-friendly video as part of their ‘Rubbish Rebels’ series.

Radio

Here is an example of how Essex County Council used its local Heart FM website to promote reuse with Freegle. https://www.heart.co.uk/essex/events/essex-county-council-freegle/

Collection Calendars

The London Borough of Croydon promote Freegle on their collection calendar each year. Croydon are one of the UK's busiest Freegle communities with over 26,000 members.