St Mary & St Milburgh Church in Offenham has recently become a Silver Eco Church. PCC member Debbie Harrison has led on the work and the award was presented at the church’s patronal festival last Sunday.
Debbie said: “I have been on the PCC for a number of years, but my faith developed significantly following an Alpha course two years ago and after that I felt that our eco-responsibilities needed to be an important focus. I became our deanery eco champion and began looking more seriously at the Eco Church survey for our church. When I finished the survey, I found that we’d achieved Bronze easily and is some places were already Gold, which was great news!”
Debbie had the support of both their Priest in Charge, Jo Fielding and the PCC Treasurer. The church also has a good group of churchyard volunteers, including an ecologist who lives in the village who has encouraged the church to leave some areas unmown to encourage bees and other wildlife.
“We have committed to ensuring that all work we do on our building is net-zero carbon,” continued Debbie. “We are on a green tariff for our energy; when lights need replacing, we make sure they are LED ones, and we are looking to ensure our banking is totally ethical. Our oil boiler is also coming to the end of its life, so we are currently trying to raise funds to install infra-red heating instead. Our work with Eco Church should stand us in good stead for making grant applications.”
The church has found the community engagement section of the Eco Church survey more challenging, but they have harnessed the power of Facebook to help them to raise awareness of the issues.
“We have developed a social media plan for the year with different posts on Facebook. During Energy Saving Week we shared daily tips, and we also share information to help others work out their carbon footprint. We are now thinking about inviting speakers into the church as community events.”
Offenham PCC are very supportive of Debbie’s work and Eco Church is on the agenda at every meeting. They are a Fairtrade church and have also ensured that they have calculated the church’s carbon impact through using the Energy Footprint Tool.
“I really would encourage other PCCs to commit to talking about our environmental impact. People are often scared of the time that completing the Eco Church award will take, but registration takes minutes, and you can dip in and out. Different team members can complete different sections, it doesn’t all have to be done by one person. Churches might be surprised how easily they can achieve Bronze and for us Silver wasn’t a huge jump, there were just a few new things we had to do.”
Debbie is now beginning to work towards achieving a Gold award, although she knows that will take a little more time. “The Gold award is much more evidence based, which will take time to collect. We are already doing many of the things, but it now all needs to be written down and formalised into a plan. I hope we can get there though!”
“The important thing is for us all to do the little things that will make a difference, for example turning off lights when they don’t need to be on. I’ve found that through doing Eco Church, I have changed many of my personal actions at home, for example turning the washing machine down and switching to ethical banking. It is all these little wins that will add up to meaningful change.”
