Category Archives: environment

‘Unpacked’ coming to Abingdon

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Unpacked coming to Abingdon
The ‘Unpacked’ test at the Waitrose in, Botley Road, Oxford has been well received by people, in Oxford and area, and so the experiment is being extended to Abingdon and Wallingford from November. Waitrose have closed off an area at the back of the Abingdon store for refitting. Features are likely to include a refillable zone and frozen pick and mix with the aim of using less packaging. In Oxford they also had a lot less packaging on fruit and veg, and paper packaging round flowers. People brought along their own reusable bags and containers, or brought some in the store.
Unpacked coming to Abingdon
At the same time there is a revamp of the cafe area.
Unpacked coming to Abingdon
Some areas in the car park have been closed to hold work plant. Work started on 29th September and will take 8 weeks.

Reynolds Way Litter Pick

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Reynolds Way Litter Pick
The Abinit! litter picking volunteers were back at Reynold’s Way to help to get rid of some of the litter that had been blowing around the streets.

Some of it ends up in the hedge running alongside the Reynold’s Way Supermarket.
Reynolds Way Litter Pick
Before.
Reynolds Way Litter Pick
After.
Reynolds Way Litter Pick
Helen and Lynne continue to organise these events. There were about fourteen bags full of litter collected after about two hours. The next Abinit! litter pick starts at Abingdon Lock on Saturday 19th October. There will be impromptu picks before then.

Mass Unwrap

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Mass Unwrap
Members of the Abingdon Carbon Cutters (Cutting Plastic) group were encouraging people to unwrap produce outside the large Supermarket on the Marcham Road in Abingdon this morning as part of a Mass Unwrap.
Mass Unwrap
After removing single-use plastics from their shopping, customers could put purchases into their own containers, bags etc. The plastics were collected and returned to the supermarket. One lady brought back all the plastic packaging she had collected this year.
Mass Unwrap
The emphasis was on the unnecessary plastic, not the supermarket.
Mass Unwrap
The hope is to encourage the customers and the supermarket and its suppliers to reduce single-use plastics.

There has already been a huge reduction in the use of single use plastic shopping bags.

Air Pollution in the Vineyard

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Air Pollution in the Vineyard
Walking in Abingdon this afternoon my wife commented how bad the pollution from traffic was down the Vineyard.

The air pollution used to be concentrated in the town centre shopping streets before the Abingdon Integrated Transport Strategy (AbITS), implemented in 2006,  started holding traffic outside the town centre in roads like the Vineyard and Ock Street.
Air Pollution in the Vineyard
On investigation I found that the VWHDC council monitors levels of pollutants around the town centre. Monitoring tubes are fixed to lamp posts. They are exposed for a month at a time and sent to the laboratory for analysis and reporting.
Air Pollution in the Vineyard
One monitoring tube is in the Vineyard, and like most of the tubes around Abingdon town centre it shows a slowly decreasing trend in nitrogen dioxide levels.

This data is available at https://oxfordshire.air-quality.info.