roots down walls down
From our local Zero Waste shop — Twin Larder
At Christmas, UK households produce 30% more waste with over 250,000 tonnes of plastic discarded and £42 million worth of unwanted presents that are thrown out and sent to landfill each year! If you are worried about the state of our planet just like us, we have put together a few gift-giving ideas and tips for a more ethical, eco-friendly, low impact and sustainable Christmas.
Continue reading “Top tips for a Low Waste Christmas”
St. Peter’s Meadow and Wildlife Area
In an effort to give nature a helping hand an area of grass behind St. Peter’s Centre is being made more wildlife friendly.
The Rainbows Group that meets at the Centre made a wonderful bug house, and we have bee-friendly plants, bird roosts and a bird feeder. We have sown wild flower seeds and made a log pile and a compost bin.
Work in progress!
Contact: Barbara Rose 07761808727
The Chapel Project, Ash Vale: Going Greener
We are very lucky to have Revd Gina Hoff co-leading the Chapel Project, and she brings lots of wisdom with her as the Green Christian UK Chaplain.
The Chapel has made some eco-friendly changes, starting with where we spend our money! We buy fair trade tea, coffee and other supplies, and over lockdown have switched our gas and electric to Bulb, where we now get 100% green electric and carbon-offset gas (other suppliers are available of course!) The Chapel Kids group are in on the act as well, planting a mini ‘food forest’ in the garden and learning all about plants, pollinators and permaculture gardening. Our friend Mel W has been very busy setting up a seed swap station at The Chapel as well, so you won’t even need to buy seeds to start planting things at home, and anyone with spare seeds can pop them in the seed swap for local people to use. We will be restarting our monthly “Chapel Greens Coffee Chat” soon; pop in and say hello!
Contact: Alex 07730 609446
Facebook Link for seeds swap: https://www.facebook.com/groups/777731219796739
St Mary’s, Ash Vale: Eco Church Update
St Mary’s have a superb Eco Champion in Lesley, and she has been instrumental in helping us to earn our La Rocha Eco Church Bronze Award recently. Lots of people in our church family are environmentally conscious and help out with recycling, gardening and trying to be good stewards of church resources. We are looking at greener transport next. Watch this space for bike parking and electric cars!
Another passion at St Mary’s is food, and we can’t stand seeing it go to waste. We have joined the Foodiverse with Fareshare Go and the local Co-Op Foodshare, (joint project with the local Covid support Group) to save ‘on its last date’ food from landfill and make it part of the local food parcels project—more of that on page 24/25
Contact: Parish Office 07863 311165
St Paul’s Tongham: Charity Recycling Hub, come and join in!
The team at St Paul’s have done amazing work to set up a recycling project to support local charities. Please keep an eye on the website for the next event, and in the meantime have a look at the list below for what you can save to recycle. Thank you for your support!
Contact: clairefholt@hotmail.com
We were recently delighted to learn that St. Mary’s church has been confirmed as a Bronze Award winner under the A Rocha Eco Church scheme. This is a Christian charity with a remit to mobilise Christians and Churches to care for the environment. https://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk/
Looking forward to 2021, there are positive things that could be done to improve our eco-credentials still further, and potentially to earn a Silver Award. Here are a few ideas that we would encourage everyone at Church and the wider community in Ash Vale to consider:
· When Covid restrictions are finally lifted and services in Church resume (yes it will happen one day!), why not try walking, cycling or car sharing to get to Church?
· Consider how you could reduce waste by making small changes to your lifestyle in line with the principles of “reduce”, “re-use” and “recycle”.
· Take the time to check the source of items in your shopping trolley and commit to increase your use of Fairtrade & ethically sourced goods.
· If you are thinking of replacing your car next year, have a look at the new options for cleaner electric or hybrid vehicles.
· Calculate your personal/household carbon footprint using one of the available online tools (e.g. www.carbonfootprint.com).
· Commit to offset your own carbon footprint by making a donation to one of many environmental projects, such as the tree nurseries being set up by Amaha We Uganda (www.amahaweuganda.org).
The national Church has a target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. St.Mary’s carbon footprint has recently been calculated and a baseline has been set or 2018 which was 22.66 tCO2. Of this, 16.94 tCO2 is attributable to gas and electricity usage, based on actual meter readings. The remainder is due to a range of factors including car use by people attending church services, food served in church and use of paper, etc. These contributions are hard to capture precisely but have been estimated using information from St. Mary’s Annual Report. As some improvements were made to the heating system at the end of 2018, and 2019 was a warm year, encouragingly, we have seen an improvement. 2019 has been calculated at 18.02 tCO2, of which 11.46 tCO2 is attributable to gas and electricity use.
I was recently asked how many trees would need to be planted to offset our carbon footprint. Not knowing the answer, I reckoned a quick online search would yield the required information but as is often the case, it proved to be a little more complicated. First, I discovered the amount of CO2 absorbed by a tree depends on multiple factors such as species, climate, rainfall and elevation, and secondly opinions vary on the number of years that should be used in calculations. After reviewing several references I am assuming 8kg/year for a “typical” tree over 20 years, one tree will offset 160kg of CO2, and six trees will offset 1 tonne (tCO2). For St.Mary’s church, this gives a target of 108 trees to offset our 2019 carbon footprint.
Let’s work together on this on our journey towards a Carbon Neutral future.
By Lesley Murphy