Silver award for going green

The ‘Eco Team’ at St Andrew’s Churchdown has received a silver Eco Church award for their practical work to care for creation.

Eco Church Awards are run through A Rocha, the Christian environmental charity which is committed to helping Christians care for the world.

 

Some of the positive action that the church was already doing included:

 

• Car share scheme
• Recycling; garden waste and food waste bins in use
• Clothing recycling schemes used to help Syrian refugees
• Traidcraft stall following services
• Garden area for community use
• Office printing on back to back paper using paper from responsible sources
• Toilet Twinning
• Home groups covering the topic caring for God’s creation
• Faith and Fitness weekly group whereby participants walk/run and grow in Faith
• TV screens used for advertising church events and displaying the words for worship songs rather than having them printed

With a few simple additions like recycling old felt tip pens, leaving the church land undisturbed to encourage wildlife and having labelled recycling bins in the communal areas, the church was able to up its rating to the silver band.

They now have their eyes on the gold award and are looking forward to taking the actions they need to achieve this level.

Eco Team member Chantal Whitehouse said: “We are blessed to have received the silver award, which has encouraged us to continually look at ways of increasing our eco-awareness amongst the community and endeavour to go for gold.

“At St Andrew’s we are passionate about eco-awareness and hope we can motivate other churches to make small changes in what they do, to make a huge difference to caring for God’s wonderful creation.”

For more information about EcoChurch Awards, contact the Revd Arthur Champion, Diocesan Environmental Adviser on 01242 870402, or achampion@glosdioc.org.uk