Towards a Greener Church

A group from Bunyan met together on recently to discuss ways in which we can help the church take more responsibility for the ways in which we use energy and dispose of waste. After some good conversation where we each learnt of some new things we can do, we came up with 10 initial proposals for the church:

1. The church to work towards becoming an eco-congregation

2. The church to explore spray-on double glazing for windows of church buildings as a form of insulation. I didn't know about this, but apparently its fairly cheap and sounds useful for churches where its difficult to double-glaze.

3. The church to organise a list of those people within the congregation who grow their food. The idea here is can find ways of encouraging more people to grow food in their gardens and share it among the congregation.

4. The church to ensure that all light bulbs where possible are low-energy.

5. The church to recycle all paper it produces and has recycling bins in the church office and the main church building. This to include plastic bottles (i.e. milk bottles) and any cardboard packaging.

6. The church to encourage small groups to be collection points for those who are unable to recycle their waste – cardboard packaging, paper, plastic bottles, glass, tins/cans, etc.

7. The church to produce meeting agendas on A5 paper where possible. Often there is no need to waste a whole A4 page.

8.  The church to encourage Twinklers (church toddler group) to only use bio-degradable emergency nappies.

9. The church to have a ‘Green’ tip of the week in the weekly notices.

10. The church to only use recycled toilet roll and environmentally friendly cleaning products (e.g. the Ecover range).

Comments

[Account Deleted]

I think that the eco friendly toilet paper rather than the extra fluffy soft quilted stuff with aloe vera is a step too far!

Seriously (perhaps that last comment was) I learned such a lesson about the environmental stuff from my mate David. We were staying with him in Canberra Australia. He recycled. We were not used to this. He did not lecture us. Such a gentle guy. But whenever we put in the bin stuff that could be recycled he simply with a pained look on his face went into the bin took it out and put it in the right box. Saying nothing but through his actions he taught us that it mattered and it mattered enough to him to go out of his way to do it. We now recycle lots and whenever I'm tempted not to bother I think of David going into the bin...

[Marcus Bull]

Thanks for this, Andy. I've copied and posted it on my blog. Some great ideas!! I'm sure we have a responsibility in the church about this stuff ... but we're generally not very good at it.

[trefor]

theres an org called 'a rocha' http://en.arocha.org/ukmembers/index2.html Christians concerned for the envirionment. they have good ideas and good resources.