Posted on by Brea

The Environmental Justice Mission Team Invites Your Church to jump into: 

Off-Plastics October

Eliminating single-use plastic from our lives will help reduce litter, ease landfills, and reduce the use of petroleum for disposable products.

It will reduce the volume of micro-pellets of plastic that are showing up on land, sea and air, and in animals and humans.  It will signal to oil and gas producers that they can move on to cleaner energy because there will be less demand for petroleum products.

It will reduce the amount of chemicals from plastic manufacturing, arriving in our air and water.

  • Sign up your church to take at least 10 concrete steps to stop using
    single-use plastic for your meals and activities.
  • List them in the form linked below and submit them by Oct. 31 to
    uccrev77@gmail.com        

FIVE CHURCHES THAT SUBMIT THEIR FORMS WILL BE CHOSEN AT RANDOM TO RECEIVE A $50 PRIZE FROM THE EJ TEAM!

WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING, NOV. 9!

So get your youth group, men’s breakfast club, women’s guild to undertake a review of the church kitchen and Sunday school closets and make a list.

Yours for a livable world,

The Environmental Justice Mission Team
Liz Brunton, Karl Jones, Barb Pence, Carol Swingle, Zack Jackson, Marian Shearer

DOWNLOAD THE FORM TO PARTICIPATE IN ‘OFF-PLASTICS OCTOBER’:

Off Plastics October (Word document)

IDEAS FOR REDUCING SINGLE-USE PLASTICS AT CHURCH:

  • Use real silverware and coffee cups at coffee hour (you know your church kitchen still has them!) Volunteer for the washing-up team.
  • Use only paper straws.
  • Go back to glass communion cups, or change to intinction.
  • Buy coffee hour snacks in cardboard boxes or paper, not rigid plastic clamshells.
  • Encourage using cloth or mesh bags, or even paper, not plastic bags from stores, such as when you buy groceries for a church meal, or Sunday School supplies at dollar-type stores. (Do this at home too, of course!)
  • No more Styrofoam cups or take-out trays. Compostable items are available in restaurant stores. Foam items last forever in landfills.
  • Install a water cooler to refill reusable water bottles; discourage stocking the church with single water bottles.
  • Ditch plastic table covers you’ve been saving after a few uses and transition to cloth table covers. (Old bedsheets work well!)
  • Throw a kitchen shower for tablecloths and dish towels and cloth napkins. Take turns taking them home to wash.
  • Be intentional about recycling office paper, bulletins, notices.
  • Investigate NexTrex or other companies which make composite benches from recycled plastic bags and wraps. Sponsor bag collections; partner with organizations that use your building; earn a bench for your garden.
  • Take an inventory of how your church supplies (toilet paper, bulbs, furnace filters, etc.) are packaged. Let suppliers know you do not want plastic wrappings.
  • If your township does not recycle, become a champion for changing that! Many things that are marked with 5 or above are theoretically recyclable, but there are very few facilities in Pennsylvania that actually take them.

Think of something else and let us know!