Sustainability in Wantage by Julie Mabberley

NEXT Saturday is the Wantage Autumn Festival run by Sustainable Wantage and Sweatbox at King Alfred's East Site in Springfield Road.

This is a family-friendly celebration of the season with food stalls selling preserves, honey, bread, cheese, bread and mead produced by local firms as well as craft stalls selling things such as handmade cards and picture frames.

There will also be live entertainment, local ale and cider, local food BBQ and Goan curries, traditional apple pressing – where you can bring your own apples with bottles for juicing – 'grow your own' advice and lots of kids activities, including bouncy castle, pedal-powered gadgets, mega decoupage, face painting and Lenny’s Lizards.

This is always a fun event and a good demonstration of many of the things that are created in our community.

This got me thinking about sustainability in general. We believe that sustainability includes the need to conserve and promote, not only the necessities of life such as food production and water supply, but also the infrastructure necessary for education, health and well-being to maintain a good quality of life.

Sustainable Wantage is a group which supports sustainability. They are based at the Mix on Mill Street and run numerous events and workshops relating to:

- Food - supporting local produce and growing your own,

- Energy - saving energy and renewable generation,

- Resources - reducing waste through recycling, composting, upcycling,

- Environment - protection and promotion of our natural environment and biodiversity,

- Transport - promoting low impact travel like biking, public transport, car sharing, and

- Community - events, supporting local independent trade, connecting with other groups.

They support the Market Garden in the grounds of The Charlton Centre which provides opportunities for people with special needs to develop skills and enjoy gardening.

They also have a lease on a small piece of woodland on the Ridgeway owned by the Woodland Trust to allow local people to enjoy and appreciate nature, practise rural crafts and harvest timber and sustainable wood fuel for local use.

We all take part in sustainability on a daily basis through the district council: Biffa takes away all of our waste and of the 66 per cent of our waste that is recycled, one third is recycled in this country and the remainder is sent overseas. About 95 per cent of our residual waste is sent to Ardley Energy Recovery Facility and used to produce electricity so it can’t get much more sustainable.

There are five allotment sites in Wantage with some vacancies and a waiting list in Grove, so producing our own food in gardens and allotments is also happening. Although we all know that the amount of productive farming land in Oxfordshire is declining as land is used for building.

Health and wellbeing does depend on the availability of preventative health care and sufficient leisure facilities including parks, green spaces, footpaths and cycleways. These are all areas where improvement could be achieved.