How green are you?
We are always being told that we should reduce our carbon footprints. Do you still make the effort or are you overcome with pessimism? Reports that low energy light bulbs give off harmful radiation and their manufacture causes too much environmental damage should not influence your desire to try to decrease your use of energy. Buy some candles and save electricity that way. Go to bed earlier and require less light anyway. I refuse to be convinced that the action and attitude of individuals has no effect on the immediate environment. Remain positive and optimistic or crumple. It’s your choice.
So how are you going to save energy in the forthcoming festive season? Not by strewing the place with fairy lights and energy wasting extravaganza, I hope. Find more energy efficient ways to spread your light.
Of course we need government action to remedy our environmental problems but we’ve been waiting for that for years and we can’t just sit back and do nothing.
How are you helping the planet by disposing of your litter carefully? How many of you think your road is free of litter? I’d be grateful if you could tell me the name of the one litter free road in Darras Hall because I have not found one yet. Plastic bottles, cigarette packets, glass bottles, cans and food waste all lurk under hedges and behind gate posts. Maybe the items blow out of rubbish bins? Find some way to tie up your rubbish securely so that it doesn’t blow away. Having just returned from a holiday at the coast, I’m aware that at least 267 different species can be harmed by litter on our beaches. It won’t be long before you have a minute portion of litter on your dinner plate if you eat fish which have ingested microscopic bits of plastic in the sea and if you ever see a Leather-Back Turtle in our local waters it will be a dead one killed by eating plastic which it mistook for jellyfish. Combat litter now !
Oh doom and gloom! So many words beginning with “dis” get in the way of our efforts to be an eco congregation. Dismissal of energy efficient light bulbs, disapproval of our wild garden, disregard of my efforts to develop positive attitudes towards inclusion of prayer for the environment in our weekly services. I’m tired of being a one woman band - let us have some “en” words to cheer ourselves up. Encouragement would be a good start followed by enthusiasm and engagements in energetic enterprises. I entreat everyone to show a little more involvement in enlivening and enhancing our environment.
Did we focus on creation time during the period 1st September to 4th October? (see Synod news in “The Source” July/August 2008). I’m not sure, I was not in church very much. I’m suffering from the “dis” disease, namely disappointment, dismay and disillusion. Throw me a lifeline in the form of an “en” word please.
Penny Hewitt
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