Welcome to
Green at Grace
Episcopal Church
Grace Episcopal Church in Wilmington, Delaware, is a caring, giving, Christian community providing opportunities for worship, prayer, study, and fellowship.
"It's not easy being Green," Kermit the Frog
No one can miss the constant news and references to what is happening to our environment as a result of influences of humanity. The air is dirtier, the water is becoming undrinkable- causing illness. The climate is suffering from changes that have brought us killer Hurricanes like Rita and Katrina. There is increasing drought in many parts of the world, as well as unwanted floods in others. California is burning up and Sri Lanka is under water. Species are becoming extinct and we are putting our future and our children's futures at risk if we don't take immediate steps to protect our Earth.
As members of Grace, we are starting our baby steps to honor God through our actions to conserve the creation. The Book of Common Prayer in Eucharistic Prayer C calls this globe we all share "this fragile earth, our island home."
We at Grace will be intentional in looking at ways that we can make a difference, not only here at Church, but in our homes. Perhaps it doesn't seem like recycling those plastic bottles will make much of a difference, but there is a scale of economies that says differently. Perhaps we could even do without those expensive, energy guzzlers of bottled water completely. One way to rethink our efforts is to change our paradigm to one that is God centered. Through our efforts, we honor God, we honor God's creation and we honor those who share this island home with us. Let's start there and perhaps it will become clear that it is easy to be green.
This page will feature ways that Grace Church is honoring our faith through conservation as well as continuing education about changes that we can make in our lives- some of them quite easily, others with a little more effort, but all important ways of honoring the Creator, the Creation, and each other.
Recycling:
We will try to begin recycling at Grace. We already have recycle containers. We need volunteers via sign-up sheets to take the full containers to recycle sites. Let's see if we can make this work!
For your consideration
How many plastic bags and water bottles litter our roadsides and fill our landfills? Do you remember a time before they existed? Both of these are a waste of our natural resources as well as more trash than we can handle.
For example, did you know that water that comes out of your tap is cleaner and to higher safety standards than most bottled water? Just because the words Spring or Natural are on the label doesn't mean that you are getting a better tasting or safer product. As a matter of fact, many of the bottled water distributors do not clearly let you know that their water is actually obtained from commercial water sources-tap water! An example of this is Dasani. Isn't it a waste of time, fuel and other resources to ship water to the US from Fiji? Think of the fuel for ships, cranes, trucks, as well as the resources for the bottling and packaging.
There are times when bottled water is a convenience, but there are many more times we can fill up a glass or even refill a bottle from the tap and reuse it. Let's start thinking about this and decrease the amount of bottled water we consume.
And while you are at it... take your own bags to the grocery store. Giant, Super Fresh and Ikea sell their own nice, indestructible, reusable bags. If all of us use our own bags several times a month, think of all we will save in resources and waste. It's not hard to do.
A great project for families is to talk about this around the dinner table some night and come up with your own suggestions for easy changes that will help preserve our fragile earth for our children and their children.
Let me know what you do and I will feature it on this web page. Contact je_jensen@comcast.net.