Sustainable Wantage is a Community Action Group focused on activities that protect and enhance our natural environment and strengthen our local community. Within this, lies The Mix. We spoke to Jo, the community space manager at This Mix to learn about the past, present and future of the organisation, from its inception to their plans for the years ahead.
Can you tell us a little about what The Mix does within the Wantage community?
The Mix is run by Sustainable Wantage, a community action group working to reduce our collective impact on the environment. We have lots of different things happening in The Mix, for example a Community Fridge (collecting surplus food from local Supermarkets and sharing it out – helping reduce food waste) a Refill station (where people can bring their own bottles and buy washing up liquid, laundry liquid, shampoos, etc) a Repair Cafe (where volunteers help fix all kinds of electrical and household items) and workshops and courses for people to learn to make, mend, and upcycle. We also have Terracycle collections for biscuits, sweets and chocolate wrappers, medicine blister packs, toothpaste tubes and brushes, and pens; these things can be recycled but aren't accepted as part of our kerbside collections.
When was The Mix’s inception?
Sustainable Wantage took on 15 Mill Street in 2013, it was one of over 20 empty shops in Wantage at that time.
Can you explain the reason behind the name?
From the start we had lots of different ideas of what could happen in the space, over time it's certainly lived up to the name.
What has been your favourite experience or memory since involvement in the organisation?
Although it was a bleak time, the way our volunteers rallied round to keep the Community Fridge running during the first lockdown was absolutely amazing. Everyone pitched in to get a delivery system up and running so we could carry on saving food and get it out to people that were isolating; we were doing up to five delivery rounds a day for several months; our volunteers gave huge amounts of time and energy to make it happen and did it all with a smile.
Why do you think it is so important for communities to have access to an organisation like The Mix?
More and more people are feeling the urgency of taking action to protect our planet, having a hub like The Mix brings people together on this and when we do things together, they start to add up pretty quickly. For example, last year we shared out 4.2 tonnes of food through our Community Fridge and our Repair Cafe volunteers fixed up and gave away 369 laptops. People often come in because they have something they no longer need but don't want to throw away, or they want to find a more sustainable way of doing something; we can help make connections across the community, finding homes for all kinds of things from laptop charging trolleys for schools to crockery, cutlery, and furniture from a cafe, and sharing ideas and information too.
What can the community do to support The Mix?
- Come along and use some of the food from the Community Fridge, it's all free and the more we can share it out, the better.
- Bring in any of the things mentioned above that we're able to send for recycling through Terracycle.
- Come and try our refills and look out for workshops and courses. If you have ideas for workshops that would help us all live a bit more lightly on the planet do let us know.
We've just applied for a grant to get bikes to school children so if all goes well (fingers crossed) we'll be looking to gather second hand bikes, keep an eye on our facebook page to find out about this, and other things as they happen: facebook.com/thewantagemix
What's next for The Mix?
We started work on setting up a Library of Things in March 2020, it's been on hold for the past couple of years but we're hoping to be working on that again soon. This would be a collection of all kinds of tools and other equipment available to hire. Things that people only need to use occasionally like a hedge trimmer, carpet cleaner, power drill, projector, wallpaper stripper, etc. Sharing these things can save people money, and storage space too, and helps reduce pressure on our planet's resources. We have projects happening outside The Mix as well, this April we'll be launching Solar Streets – a community buying scheme where residents and businesses can get Solar PV installed at a discounted rate. If anyone is interested in finding out more, we're having a Solar Streets launch event on Thursday 7 April 7.30pm on zoom, people can sign up to attend via this link: tinyurl.com/WantageLaunch
