Treading Lightly for Lent 2012

Tread Lightly for Lent 2012

The Presbyterians have done it again creating a wonderful environmentally focused Lenten calendar for 2012: Tread Lighting for Lent 2012.  The calendar take individuals on a journey of reflection and action that anyone of us can and should do. 

When we care for God’s good earth, we do so through both action and reflection. We are called to engage in intentional and thoughtful “doing” as well as “being.” As we anticipate the lengthening of daylight during Lent, we are invited to long, deep reflection. This reflection will shape our action. Likewise, our actions shape how we reflect—on ourselves, our world and our Creator.

In what spirit might we enter a season of reflection and action? I propose that we enter Lent in a spirit of fasting and feasting. We fast, refraining from things that do not foster life. Yet we also feast, remembering God’s grace and power in the world. Echoing Sabbath and Jubilee themes in the Torah and other parts of Holy Scripture, we feast on God’s liberating goodness even as we fast from the harmful things we do to the earth.

So I invite you, then, to reflect and to act, to fast and to feast. This simple calendar will serve as a daily Lenten reminder of this invitation. Most reflections and actions can be done in less than 10 minutes, or they can take as long as you like. Guiding themes for the weeks in this calendar are: creation, water, land, air, people, diverse species, and lifestyle commitment.

From the introduction to the Tread Lighting for Lent 2012 from the Presbyterian Church (USA) Environmental Ministries.

If you are interested in another faith based environmental path for Lent, there is the 2012 Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast which will send you email with daily actions for Lent.  The Lenten Carbon Fast is developed and run by the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ.

What ever you path you choose, do something for yourself and the world the Lord has entrusted to us.

Peace!
Jon

More stuff for TerraCycle - Cereal Bar (aka Energy Bar) Wrappers

Box of candy wrappers to send into TerraCycle

Thank you to everyone for collecting and bringing in all the would be trash for TerraCycle:

• Coffee bags
• Juice Pouches
• Chip Bags
• Cookie Wrappers
• Inkjet Cartridges (though we've decided to give those to the Robert's Elementary School PTO instead)
• Candy Wrappers.

Through our efforts we have raised over $100 for Grace Church and recycled thousands of items that would have otherwise wound up in a landfill.

Great Job Grace Church!

During the last big sorting I noticed that a lot of people were collecting cereal bar wrappers which at the time we were unable to TerraCycle.  I checked with TerraCycle and they said they consider them energy bars and so I signed us up for that campaign as well.  So, in addition to all the great stuff above, you can now bring in cereal bar and energy bar wrappers.

If anyone is interested in helping with the management of Grace's TerraCycle program and sorting the items, please let me know as I'd love the help.

Peace!
Jonathan Hunt

Earth Hour this Saturday!

Do you turn off the lights when you leave a room?

Why do you turn them off?

Do you know what Earth Day is?
How about Earth Hour?

Earth Hour is a global initiative where individuals, businesses, governments and communities are invited to turn out their lights for one hour to show their support for environmentally sustainable action.

When? Saturday March 26, 2011 at 8:30 to 9:30 PM (local time)

What? Turn off non-essential lights

Why? To show your support for environmentally sustainable action.

What else? Register at http://www.earthhour.org/ to be counted.

Grace Church is participating by turning off our exterior lights for Earth Hour this year.

The Greening Grace team encourages all members of the Grace Church Community to turn off their lights and to sign up with the Earth Hour website to show your support for this action.

Who else? The City of Boston and the State of Massachusetts are participating. The City of Boston list includes the following local participants and more:

• MA State Buildings
• Boston Hostelling
• IBEW 103
• The Lenox Hotel
• Westin Copley Place
• Museum of Science
• Boston Children’s Museum

Other places you may have heard of that are participating in Earth Hour 2011 include:

• The Empire State Building, New York
• Times Square, New York
• Christ the Redeemer statue, Brazil
• National Monument, Indonesia
• London Eye
• Eiffel Tower, Paris

Please join us in turning off your lights for Earth Hour and let us know by leaving a comment below!

Alicia

for the Greening Grace Team

Tread Lightly for Lent - Lenten Green Calendar of Activities

On Sunday, copies of the "Tread Lightly for Lent" calendar of environmentally conscience activities for each day in Lent were made available in the Parish Hall.  This wonderful calendar was put together by the Presbyterian Church (USA) Environmental Ministries and is the best "green" Lenten calendar we found so the Greening Grace Team decided we should reflect on it at Grace Church.

You can pick up a copy in the Parish Hall or download it from the web:

http://www.pcusa.org/media/uploads/environment/pdf/lentcalendarnew.pdf

The activities include a good mix of reflection, action and ideas. 

My favorite action is to

Collect your personal trash and recyclables throughout the day. At the end of the day, survey your waste and think of ways to reduce. On average, Americans create 4.6 pounds of waste a day.
Saturday, March 12th from Tread Lightly for Lent

Please take a look and consider these actions during Lent.  The Episcopal Church has similar resources for many of the programs linked to within the Presbyterian Church.  Please ask us if you need help finding local contact information or have a question about .

Genesis 2:15 (New International Version, ©2011)

 ¹⁵ The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

More TerraCycling - Ceral Bar Wrappers

Boxes of stuff packed up
to send to TerraCycle

Three more boxes of stuff (Chip Bags, Juice Pouches and Coffee Bags) has been shipped to TerraCycle for recycling.  So far Grace Church has collected and recycled over 31 lbs of trash.

Washing it all

Going forward, please separate your Juice Pouches from other TerraCycle items as the juice pouches can make other things sticky.

Given how many cereal bars were turned in with candy wrappers, I have signed us up to collect "Energy Bar" wrappers. "Any foil lined energy and granola bar wrapper" can be collected.

Box of Candy Wrappers

Box of Chip Bags

Christmas Light Trade-in at Home Depot

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Home Depot is offering a 10 day program to trade in those old incandescent energy hog Christmas lights for $3 off new high efficiency LED Christmas lights.  The offer is good through November 14, 2010 so be sure to act on it now. Home Depot will even be recycling the old lights.

Read more at Jon & Alicia's blog:


Green Lifestyle Consulting:  Holiday Light Trade-in and Recycling Program at Home Depot
Do you have strings of old incandescent holiday lights around your house?  Do they even work?  Even if they don't you can trade them in for a discount on energy efficient LED holiday lights at Home Depot from now until November 14, 2010.

Now Collecting Ink Jet Printer Cartridges for TerraCycle

In addition to the candy wrappers, coffee bags, juice pouches, etc., Grace Church is now also collecting ink jet printer cartridges for recycling through TerraCycle.  We'll earn a quarter ($0.25) for each cartridge we recycle, so bring in those used up ink jet cartridges and help Grace Church recycle.

We'll have a small box next to the other TerraCycle stuff in the kitchen behind the recycling so as not to mix the sometimes sticky juice pouches or chip bags with the ink jet printer cartridges.

More Recycling through TerraCycle

So far we have recycled over 1,700 drink pouches and now you can recycle even more "trash" to earn money for Grace Church. We are now collecting:

• Cookie Wrappers
• Coffee Bags
• Chip Bags
• Candy Bar Wrappers
• and of course the Juice Pouches

Please start saving your wrappers and bags to bring to church.  You can leave them by the recycling in the kitchen.  You can combine all the wrappers/bags/pouches into plastic grocery bags and I'll sort them.  TerraCycle will take the wrappers and turn them into heavy duty trash cans that should be available at some point through Home Depot.

If you are doing Coffee Hour please save the empty coffee bags.

Details from TerraCycle:
We accept any empty brand or size chip bag.

We are collecting all brands and sizes of cookie wrappers such as Nabisco® and Keebler®. Unfortunately we do not accept the inner trays of cookie wrappers, so please remove them before sending your shipment.

We accept any brand and any size coffee bag.

We will accept any brand and size candy wrappers. Please keep in mind that we donate *$0.02 for all candy wrappers. We do not accept candy boxes or gum packaging. Please note: If you have gum packages, please join the Gum Package Brigade to send in your gum packaging.

We accept any kind of brand of drink pouches. We do not accept juice boxes (but they can be recycled in Medford's co-mingled residential recycling).

If you have any questions, please ask me, Jonathan Hunt.

Discounted Rain Barrels Available in Medford

If you've ever considered a rain barrel to collect rain water and water plants and garden, now is a great time.  The Mystic River Watershed Association has teamed up with the New England Rain Barrel Company to offer 55 gallon rain barrels for $75.  Orders must be placed by May 27, 2010 and pickup for all orders will be Thursday, June 3rd between 4-7pm at the WholeFoods in Medford (2151 Mystic Valley Parkway).

We [The Hunts] have a pair of these rain barrels from the New England Rain Barrel Company and love them.  Rain water is better for the plants than the chlorine treated tap water and good for the environment by savings treated drinking water and lessening the runoff that goes into the sewer system. Here are some more photos - the blue ones are the NE Rain Barrel ones. - Jonathan Hunt

 To get more details or order your own for pickup on June 3rd, visit the MyRWA site or the New England Rain Barrel Company.

Here is a little video about rain water collection featuring a couple of our youth:



And you only need a few minutes of rain to fill these, not 40 days.

Earth Hour Tonight at 8:30pm - Turn off your lights for 60 minutes

Join in this world wide call to action to support our planet.  Turn off your lights, and other electrical devices, for Earth Hour on Saturday, March 27th at 8:30pm local time.

Save Water at Home with Free Water Conservation Kits

(Update 3/11/2010 - DPW no longer has the water conservation kits)

I was visiting the Medford Department of Public Works in regards to the GreenUp CleanUp project when I noticed they were giving away free low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators.   I picked up a bag to see what was included and was pleasantly surprised to find the same massaging shower head we installed in our own home, though with a slightly higher flow rate (2.0 gallons per minute - gpm).  We love this shower and installed one in my mother-in-law's bathroom.  She loves it too. You can literally save thousands of gallons of water per year with a low flow shower head.

The shower head and faucet aerators (one for a kitchen faucet at 2.2 gpm and one for a bathroom faucet at 1.5 gpm) came in a bag that you can use to measure your current showers' and faucets' flow rate, i.e., how many gpm they use.  Basically, you put the bag over your shower head and run the water for 5 seconds and then read on the side of the bag how much water it uses.  Included in the bag were little dye tablets to test your toilets for leaks because leaky faucets and toilets waste tens of thousands of gallons of water per year.  I also picked up some brochures on composting, indoor and outdoor water conservation, recycling and hazardous waste disposal for Medford.

If you have not already switched all your shower heads and installed aerators on your faucets, stop by Medford City Hall and pick up your free water conservation kits from our local Department of Public Works, Room 304.  You can also drop off button batteries and old cell phones for recycling while you are there.

Have a Blessed Day!
Jon

Grace Church Joins Mass Interfaith Power and Light

Along our path to being better stewards of our environment, Grace Church has become a member of Massachusetts Interfaith Power and Light (MIP&L). Working with MIP&L will provide us access to numerous resources focused on making houses of worship more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable. Currently we are collecting the preliminary data to conduct a thorough energy audit of the church buildings including Grace Works.

MIP&L has resources available for parishioners as well. They will help arrange for free home energy audits for our parishoners' homes as well as provide follow up advice. More information on the available resources can be found on the Resources page of the MIP&L site. We will be providing information to the congregation when we have it available.

The Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts has had good experiences with MIP&L and we hope that Grace will continue that trend. You can read some recent MIP&L success stories for inspiration.

Thanks,
Jon