Eco Church

The Eco Church group came together back in 2016 to help us as a church focus on important "green issues" relating to worship, the church building, biodiversity and land use and community; both local and global. Eco church criteria were set up by a Christian environmental group called A Rocha. Back in the early 1980's they had a vision to combine their faith and conservation issues in order to actively demonstrate God's care for the planet. Their first project was in Portugal but today they have projects in many countries round the world. Having the framework of the Eco Church enables churches to assess their green credentials and look for ways to improve them. Why is this important? God calls us to care for his world, to be good stewards in the broadest sense and to take responsibility where we can to ensure its beauty is sustained for future generations.

St Michael's in Hawkshead has achieved Silver status and is working towards gold. The sorts of things we have done to achieve this include:

• Supporting the management of the churchyard to ensure it has many wildlife habitats, including yearly surveys of wild flowers and a survey with CWT in June 2024
• Reviewing the energy efficiency and carbon footprint of the church buildings
• Using fair trade products and Eco-Friendly cleaning products
• Including green issues throughout the year in Sunday services though prayer and having focussed Green Services with a creation liturgy 1-2 times per year. During Covid, we held an online service about 'Climate Change Sunday'. These services are being held across the UK and congregations are encouraged to make a commitment to greater action to address climate change in their own place of worship and community and to use their voice to tell politicians we want a cleaner, greener, fairer future at the heart of plans agreed during COP26 (Conference of Parties). The COP 26 summit brought parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement (2015) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Glasgow in November 2021.
• Reaching out to the community- there have been sustainability workshops and visiting speakers such as John Bell who came to talk on environmental issues.
• Litter picks with the community and the local Brownies going around the village to remove the litter!
• Talk from the RSPB on its Re-wilding project-February 2024
• Bird and Bat box building workshop for the community-November 2023
• Three Eco themed flower festivals (last on in May 2023-see church yard section of website for pictures)
• Organising for wildlife information boards that have been placed in the church yard
• Writing to our MP about the Environment Bill and inviting him to do a community talk on this
• Providing Eco tips and information to the congregation in the local Link magazine
• Organising a talk with a view to setting up a Repair shp cafe in the village-September 24

Photo gallery from bird & bat box making here

If you are interested in knowing more about Eco church go to: https://arocha.org.uk/ The Eco Committee at Hawkshead Church are: John Dixon, Jean Crosbie, Mike and Sue Maxwell, Judith Marshall, Emily Bagg, Cherry Robbens and Joyce Hallam