Christmas can be the most wonderful but wasteful time of the year. According to Government statistics at this time of year around 30% more waste is generated, including more than 1 billion Christmas cards and 500 tonnes of Christmas lights which are thrown away each year, along with over 60 million unwanted gifts.
WasteLess Wonderland is a brand new, contemporary reinterpretation of the classic Christmas market with a reuse theme, curated by HemingwayDesign and commissioned by Landsec at Westgate Oxford, which ran throughout December 2023.
The event platformed purposeful talent as part of a Christmas market experience that offers ‘good for-the-planet’ gifts, with independent designer-makers selling slow fashion and garments from reworked textile waste, and artisan food producers offering great-tasting relishes that use imperfect and surplus fruit and veg helping to tackle food waste.
The curated Climatarian Kitchen street food menu, made entirely from food surplus, changed daily or weekly according to the locally sourced and seasonal surplus produce available and the chef’s ingredient selections.
The Festive Factory offered hands-on creative workshops that resourcefully reimagined cast-offs from Christmas past to make handmade gifts and upcycled Xmas ornaments.
Workshops included Christmas star making workshops using only wood offcuts, kaleidoscope gift-making using recycled Christmas cards, Japanese zero-waste gift-wrapping and wreath-making using natural resources, seasonal foliage and adornments. Our visible mending workshops repair and repurpose donated cashmere and woollens too damaged to sell in Cancer Research stores.
Good quality toys that are no longer played with can be swapped for a new (to you) toy at Santa’s Sustainable Toy Swap and the Merry Bookmass Tree is stuffed full of books, donated by Oxfam, that can be exchanged.
Friday Lates transformed into The Reuse Party with Charity Shop DJ selecting from records sourced solely from charity shops and the Toast Ale pop-up bar offering award-winning craft beer brewed with surplus fresh bread that would otherwise have gone to waste.
The event design, decorations and structures breathe new life into leftover materials. Working with John Lewis’ Creative Studio to repurpose surplus shelving into market stalls and reuse set flats in storage to build our street food kitchen servery, and Traid for surplus fabric used in our banners and fabric Christmas trees.
This event, which delivered Christmas with a difference, won the Sceptre award 2024 for the Christmas Campaign of the year.
