Introduction
A new Eco team has been set up at St Philips and St James Church. A few meeting have occurred to date. Robin Pye, Loveday Alexander, Martin Sinker, Martin Steiger, Amy Ruston, Linda and Beverley Hartland are members of the team.
It was decided that the aim should be to make the operation of the church and parish room net Zero for carbon dioxide.
Measure of the Church and Parish Room Carbon Footprint
Eco Church Awards
We also completed a survey determine how close or far we were from achieving an Church Eco award. From this we determined that we were close to achieving a Bronze award.
Please see link for details of the full survey for 2023-2024 year.
The team discussed some ideas and have been working on these since.
Use of church land
- Wild Meadow Garden
This has been started thanks to Linda and others; many wild flower seeds sown and plants have been planted, hopefully over the years this will develop into two lovely areas of wild flowers where the old marque was and near the war memorial.
- Bulbs in garden
Thanks to everyone that helped with giving us some snow drops and other bulbs, which have been planted in the garden lawns.
- Bug Hotel
Martin Steiger has started to build one for us, but it would be nice if other including children would volunteer to help with this.
- Bird boxes
Have you noticed there are already many bird boxes dotted about on the land.
- Make trees safer
This is an on-going action, with some tree surgeons and our neighbouring schools.
- Addition of bike stands
A grant has successfully been applied for to enable us to put up some bike stands for anyone use. Plus run two Free Basic Bike Maintenance courses in the parish rooms.
(Free to attend:- up to 12 can attend one course. Please book using links;
24th August 2-4pm https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/basic-bike-maintenance-coarse-tickets-942810590857?aff=oddtdtcreator
21st Sept 2-4pm https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/basic-bike-maintenance-course-tickets-942814612887?aff=oddtdtcreator
Engagement of church users
- Newsletter
A section for Eco tips has been added to the monthly newsletter. If you want have any then please let us know and we can add these to the newsletter.
- Your own Carbon Foot Print and the Congregations
We thought it might be an idea for people who are interested to add details of their carbon footprint to so we could see if as community we are managing to reduce it over time. Over 2-3 years Beverley Hartland managed to reduce her footprint from ?? to 4.4 tonnes a year, which she currently offset by 4 tonnes a year by the use of her roof solar panels.
Would you like to find out your carbon footprint? We have evaluated a few different tools that exist to help people with this and identified the following link as what we thought was the best. https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
To use the tool you will need to know how much you have used of gas and electricity over a year, (you can get this from your energy bills.) Plus what type of vehicle you drive and approximate millage for a year. Plus approximate spending on other items like food.
So we can see how as a group (anonymously.) Please enter the results of the survey into the spreadsheet. Please click on the link for to enter this. Or let Maria or Beverley Hartland at churchoffice.spsjae@gmail.com
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/carbon_footprint_over_time
- Blister pack recycling
Thank you to all those who are already using this and putting their empty blister packs into the new bin in the south porch. We are currently collecting and getting recycled approximately 2 carrier bags a week.
- Eco Notice Board
There are plans to pull together a display of some of the activities planned or that have been done already.
Buildings of church users
- Infra Red survey of Church and Parish Rooms
An infra-red survey of the church and parish rooms was carried out. For the full results please click on the link for the report.
https://docs.google.com/document/infrared_result_summary
In summary it was found that the window and floor of the parish room leak a lot of heat. For the church the doors when closed work well to keep heat in, but the windows leak a lot of heat.
- Change lighting to LED
You may have noticed that a process of changing our lights to LED which are up to 10 times more energy efficient has already started with the pendent light bulbs having been changed to LED.
- Water Butts
Install some water butts to enable rain water to be collected and used to water the garden.
- Parish Rooms
The team is currently working on pulling together and information to enable us to apply for a grant with aim of improving the energy efficiency of this building. With new LED lighting, improved floor insulation and thermal curtains.
- Church
Long term we are also planning to look at how we might improve the insulation and energy management of the church itself. Any ideas or recommendations if you know of other churches that have done this or are planning too, please let us know.