Zero Carbon Guildford is a local charity focused on tackling local issues through pragmatic and practical solutions and projects, which also help to tackle wider scale issues such as nature loss and climate change. We run ZERO, the hub on Guildford High Street where residents can visit to find out how to cut their energy bills, reduce food waste and restore nature on their own patch.
ZCG runs the Surrey-wide Home Energy Advice Team, which provides free in-person home visits to support residents with their energy bills. We conduct thermal imaging surveys and help residents find funding for short and long term energy savings, and have supported over 600 homes so far in 2024!
We also run the Library of Things in partnership with Guildford Library, where residents can borrow a wide range of items for free, and we work with lots of local supermarkets to reduce food waste, re-distributing food surplus from ZERO to the public - having save nearly 30 tonnes of food from going to waste already in 2024!
Our Community Water Lab housed in ZERO is unique in having community-run E.coli testing capabilites, and we test the Wey and TIllingbourne to monitor for pollutants, uploading data to opensource platforms for scientifuc study.
We also work on reversing nature loss locally, with 11% of Surrey's native species having gone extinct in the last few decades. In 2024 we have installed a sedum roof in an otherwsie bare playground at Guildford Nursery, and a rooftop biodiversity garden at White Lion Walk.
Last year we were awarded the national award Innovative UK Communtiy Project.
