Lifestyle

There are so many positive lifestyle changes that can be made to reduce our personal carbon footprints, and many resources available to help with this. Here, we concentrate on how churches can help their congregations to make changes.

Recycling

Several churches in Leeds have provided recycling facilities for their congregation to make it easy for them to recycle. Items that churches have been collecting include:

• Spectacles. Many opticians practices collect these for Vision Aid Overseas, who either re-use them in the developing world or recycle them. One that we know of is Headingley Bayfield & Bartlam Opticians.
• Stamps. These can be posted to RNIB, CRY (Care and Relief for the Young, RSPB or taken to Oxfam, who sell them on in aid of their charities.
• Computer cartridges and mobile phone. Many charities will take these for recycling, though the cartridges usually have to be certain types. Christian Aidis one charity who does this, and they will pick them up if you collect enough.
• Certain household items for re-use in local charities, for example Caring for Life, Simon Community, St Georges Crypt.Click here for a useful leaflet which tells you which charities will accept which items.
• Bottles. St Chad's church have installed a bottle bank in their car park for the community to use.
• Batteries. You can request to become a battery collection point for free as part of BatteryBack scheme.
• Computers. To donate used computers, printers, flat screen monitors contact www.kaba-pc.org.uk 0113 350 2007 based near Burley Road. Kaba will refurbish your donation and pass it on to charities which need it.

Green Tips

We have produced a number of green tips on powerpoint slides, like the example on the right. They mainly focus on energy use in the home. Many churches have notices on powerpointslides showing at the start of services, the intention is that one of these tips could be included in with these notices each week, or copied into a printed notice sheet. We have tried to ensure that each tip quantifies its effect on energy use/ CO₂ emissions. Click here to download the green tips as a powerpoint file.

We have a page explaining how to fit reflective foil behind your radiators to improve the efficiency of your heating system. This is a relatively simple DIY task suitable for houses, churches and other buildings with standard radiators.

Carbon Fast

Tearfund's Carbon Fast resource includes weekly studies for a small group, as well as daily carbon-cutting actions, designed to be used during Lent.

Sharing Possessions

Harehills Lane Baptist Church has set up a library-like system for lending possessions amongst the congregation. Items such as garden tools, household appliances and books all take energy to produce, so more sharing means lower CO₂ emissions. If creating a library seems a bit too much, encourage people to sign up to the website Streetbank, which does it all for you.

Sharing Land

Cragg Hill Baptist Church has made use of some spare land to create some allotments, these are used by local residents, a primary school and members of the congregation. The 'grow your own' ethic of the allotment holders is cutting the energy used in producing and transporting their food massively.