Eco award

Eco Church Bronze Award

Our Scoring & How we can improve to Silver

Eco Church is a scheme initially developed and still run by a Christian charity “A Rocha” - whose name comes from the Portuguese for a rock. The charity describes itself as:-

·        a global family of conservation organizations who work together to live out God’s calling to care for creation and equip others to do likewise.

The scoring for any church/parish is set by their responses to a detailed questionnaire. These responses determine the points awarded, and then these points are totalled by question category.

The questionnaire is formed of 5 categories or sections, and to achieve a bronze award you must score at least a bronze in each. Similarly, to move on to Silver you must score at least a silver in each.

St Mary’s has in fact done extremely well in most of the categories - achieving Gold in one, Silver in three and Bronze in just one. So, to move our award up to Silver we need to - at least initially - focus on the one category where we can improve the most.

The question categories, and our scoring was:-

So, let me give a bit more detail on the Lifestyle category about how we scored on the different questions:-

Lifestyle elements that we do (or have done) well and/or regularly:-

·        Appoint an individual or group to champion the cause of our church community becoming more environmentally sustainable:

·        Personal use and consumption of Fairtrade and/or ethically sourced goods is promoted in our church

·        Practical lifestyle tips and advice on caring for God’s earth are included in our church newsletters/on our church website

Lifestyle elements that we do “occasionally”

·        Walking and cycling to church services and events is promoted in our church

·        Our church encourages members to reduce their personal energy consumption:

·        Our church encourages members to limit their waste by adhering to the principles of reduce, re-use, recycle:

The Lifestyle section then asks these questions – and we generally don’t do them:-

·        Is the reduction of car use encouraged in our church?

·        Are members of our church encouraged to undertake a personal carbon footprint audit?

·        Does our church hosts activities and/or events that facilitate the recycling and/or reuse of goods (e.g. clothes swap events or ‘give and take’ schemes)?

·        Does our church operate a communal Christmas and/or Easter card scheme among the congregation?

·        Does our church encourages members to use food at home that is LOAF (Locally grown, Organic, Animal-friendly, Fairtrade)?

·        Does our church run or partner with other organisations in running a food cooperative that enables members to bulk buy ethically sourced produce at wholesale prices?

·        Is ethical investment of personal savings encouraged at our church:

·        As part of our life together, do members of our church undertake an environmental lifestyle audit:

To improve our award score we need to upgrade our responses to those areas we either only do occasionally or not at all. But, whilst it will be easier to increase our encouragement for the parish to walk or cycle to church more, to reduce personal energy consumption and to improve our domestic recycling, it will be challenging to tackle some of the items in the “generally don’t do” list. But, there will be ways to improve from where we are!

Over the coming months, I will increase the number of reminders and suggestions for everyone to focus on these areas, and will look at how we can tackle some of the items that look to be the most challenging!!

Neil Hegarty

St Mary’s Eco Church Coordinator

Hegarty.neil@gmail.com