Many students at Oxford will no longer be able to receive parcels to their colleges

Six colleges at The University of Oxford have stopped student deliveries going directly to the accommodation and will be instead delivered to a depot a mile outside of the city.

The deliveries will then be brought to the colleges by cargo bike.

Students at Corpus Christi, Magdalen, St Anne’s, University, Wadham and Wolfson Colleges will be asked to change their addresses with courier firms such as Evri and DpD to the depot site.

This is part of a push to stop delivery vans clogging roads and reduce carbon emissions. Depending on the participation rate, the scheme is estimated to save 50,000 litres of diesel and around 200 tons of CO2.

Deliveries of food from companies such as Deliveroo and Just Eat as well as other time-sensitive items such as medicine will still go to the porter’s lodge.

The trial scheme, run by Pedal and Post cargo bike firm, has received £30,000 in funding from the six colleges.

Prior to the change, the porters across Oxford’s 44 colleges took in around 100 van deliveries a day during term time. The six colleges that have made the change receive over 500,000 deliveries a year

Peter Burden, lodge manager at St Anne’s College Oxford told the Sunday Times: “When I first started here 15 years ago, we might only get 25 parcels a week, but now we are averaging four or five hundred.”

Angela Unsworth, domestic bursar at University College Oxford is coordinating the trial. She said: “If we can say to the students: change your Amazon address, and all your other addresses if you can, then others will be swept up without them even noticing.”

Ardeel Hussain, President of University College’s Junior Common Room said students will support the scheme because it would improve road safety as well as cutting emissions. He said: “It won’t be to much of a hassle.”

Featured image before edits via Wynand van Poortvliet and Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash. 

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