How green is your church kitchen? Here are the ten commandments!!
- Wash dishes the green way
Often churches only use hot water once a week on a Sunday. So you can keep the geyser off the whole week and turn it on before the early service. Or boil water in the urn/kettle and use it for dishes during the week.
- Cook Smart
Churches often use ancient stoves donated by somebody many years ago. It might be time to invest in a gas stove and a microwave. Buy a couple of large wonder bags for keeping food warm.
- Don’t Be Fridge Foolish
Churches often have a fridge sitting completely empty and switched on. Give someone the task of making sure it is switched off and the door left open (so it doesn’t get smelly).
If the fridge door doesn’t close securely, then you need to get the seal repaired or replaced. Older appliances are real energy hogs – is it time to get a new one?
- Buy Products with Less Packaging
When you are doing the big shop for the church function, remember that the less packaging you buy, the less garbage you create. So look for ways to avoid excess packaging. For example, buy large bottles of juice or frozen juice concentrate instead of juice boxes; get large sizes of products rather than individually wrapped ones (portion them out into reusable containers when needed)
- Recycle, Recycle, Recycle
Find out how to recycle in your area — what the recycler accepts, whether it needs to be sorted, and where you can go to recycle.
in the pew leaflet ask if someone is willing to take the recycling away . Make sure there are the necessary bins.
- Cut out the red meat
As well as being bad for the body, red meat is bad for the planet. Did you know that cattle belch? And when they belch, out comes methane gas, which is 23 times more potent at trapping heat in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide, Further, livestock manure is the source of two-thirds of man-made nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that’s 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide,. The raising and eating of livestock not only pollutes water, air, and soil, it’s responsible for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions — a higher share than transportation emissions.
- Earth friendly cleaning products
Again find a greenie in the congregation and they source earth friendly cleaning products that don’t kill the soil . Or make your own!
- Buy vegetables local
Buy your vegetables from local people – this saves on petrol , or better still – why not start a church veggie garden.. There are bound to be some people who would love to garden but don’t have access to one at home.
- Ban the non- biodegradables!
Cling film and polystyrene (styrophoam) do not biodegrade. Think about your great grandchildren and use re-usable plastic containers for left over food. Make sure the church has enough plates – or bring from home for big functions and go back to washing up rather than dumping piles of Styrofoam containers..