Zero Carbon Guildford

Hub England & Wales

Number of people in group:

200

Active participants in last year:

2999

Group started:

2021

Paid roles?

Yes

Legal Structure:

Charity

How active is your group?

Very Active

Live Projects:

• Community Growing
• Nature
• Community hub or activities
• Festivals, fairs or events
• Wellbeing or Inner Transition
• Share, Repair or reuse
• Energy
• Transport

https://www.zerocarbonguildford.org/energy-surveys https://guildfordlibraryofthings.org/

Zero Carbon Guildford (ZCG) is a Surrey-based charity who run one of the UK’s most successful ‘climate hubs’. Our climate community centre, ZERO, was the recipient of the 2023 ‘Innovative UK Community Project Award’ from the climate coalition.

Since we launched our first climate hub in November 2021 we have raised over £600,000 to support our projects in Surrey, and now have 6 charity employees!

We run a number of common-sense initiatives which support residents, tackle health inequality, and reduce waste, whilst also providing significant climate or environmental benefits. In this way our engagement strategy allows us to reach a much wider audience than just those in the ‘climate bubble’.

These includes:

• our community fridge, which saves around 30 tonnes of food waste annually, or 70+ tonnes of CO2e being avoided!
• our Home Energy Advice Team, a DESNZ-funded projects which has supported nearly 1000 Surrey homes with energy efficiency advice, with 75% of respondents saying they’d be more likely to install significant energy saving measures as a result of the survey!
• our community water testing lab, in partnership with Water Rangers and the River Wey Trust, with the UK’s first community-led E.coli testing facility
• our Library of Things, in partnership with the county council, which has saved residents nearly £100,000 by borrowing rather than buying, saving over 15 tonnes of CO2e in the process

We’ve had around 50 other communities visit for knowledge sharing on how to set up their own version of ZERO, and we always need more volunteers and support, so if you’re keen to help us continue our work, get in touch!