make a smaller ecological footprint

This week at our church’s Prudential Board meeting, we agreed to establish a Green Church Task Force. Actually, the Senior High Fellowship made the motion that they wanted to do and I agreed to be on the task force. Part of me is saying “what are you crazy?” I really do NOT need to be on another committee. But another part of me says that is something I’m passionate about and it won’t feel like ‘work’. Our church is already trying to make isolated changes – the maintenance committee has started recycled florescent bulbs and ballasts (had to find a place that we could ship them to) also the SHF also hosted a Green Sunday during coffee hour when they had reusable shopping bags for sale for $2 each, along with our usual free-trade coffee and some local organic farm goods, they also did recycling drives for batteries and electronics and sneakers, ink cartridges, etc.

So what ways has your place of worship found become more green?

This is a site that has a bunch of little short video clips with ‘commercials’ that people made on going green. Interesting stuff—I especially liked the “choose” one.

http://truths.treehugger.com/

As I was getting ready to wrap all the kid presents for under the tree, I was reminded what I did last year (sometimes, I’m so clever :)). Last year, I had made a bunch of small labels with my kids’ names on them (kinda like gift labels, but I didn’t have any of those on hand), and I attached them to various re-used gift bags, then I, of course, added tissue paper to the top (again, re-used). THEN, after all the gifts were opened, I collected all the gift bags and packed them away in our Christmas closet, when I went to get out the leftover wrapping materials, how lovely to find an assortment of gift bags already labeled with the kids names, I just sort them and popped the gifts into the appropriate size bag added tissue and I was done! I had forgotten that I had done this last year, so I was really dreading the wrapping scene (I loathe wrapping paper – the waste just makes me crazy) – and how crazy to wrap something only to have it ripped to shreds a few hours later.

I think I read this idea here—to take your dryer lint and make it into firestarters. Since we rely mostly on our wood stove for heat (haven’t turn the furnace on yet this season), I’m always looking for an easy way to start the fire burning.

I took a bunch of the dryer lint and smooshed it into a cardboard egg carton, then melted some wax from some candle stubs that I had in our candle box, poured it over the lint-filled carton and let it set up (it took longer than I thought it would). Baby, it worked like a charm – lit right up and stayed burning for longer than I thought it would. I’m thinking that I might make some of these for Xmas gifts – putting the lint in the bottom (for filler) and then topping it with evergreen trim and pinecones before adding the wax. Using muffin papers makes them a little more attractive than the egg cartons, too.

I was able to plant some more Black-Eyed Susans in our front garden. A friend of mine was getting rid some of the overabundance of BESusans in their new yard, and gifted me with them.

A few years back we converted part of our front yard into a rather large butterfly garden, along the lines of SALT (Smaller American Lawns Today), so we widened our walkways (flagstone with mulch) and put in the large garden. The b’fly garden now in it’s 3rd year has really taken off – the Butterfly Bushes are about 7 ft. tall and the BESusans and Shasta Daisies, Rosa Rogusa bushes and all the other plants have grown enormous, I was able to split many of them and spread them throughout the garden, making the existing garden footprint much bigger. It feels so good to reduce our lawn size especially when it doesn’t cost us anything.

I’m thinking that if it dries out nicely this week, I will mower over the leaves in the lawn and try reducing them to a nice mulch to go into the garden.

I’ve never been part of a team before. :) Thanks for the invite JL!

doing a better job at recycling. We are already pretty good at this, but looking at my town’s recycling program, I know that there are some things that I need to do better. I know that I throw away too much paper into the garbage, instead of the recycling, but that was mostly because I didn’t know what could/couldn’t be recycled. By educating myself and setting up a system, this should be pretty easy.