Eco ChurcH
Eco Blog by Chris Marshall (Member of our church)
Eco thoughts for April
This past month has been a positive one for Trinity. At our Parade Service a couple of weeks ago the Girls’ Brigade presented the church with four Toilet Twinning Certificates which means that there are four villages in very deprived countries that now have a toilet thanks to money raised by our young girls. The countries the girls chose, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Tanzania all have Girls’ Brigade Companies, but so many of those young ladies do not have access to a safe sanitary space and this scheme will enable them, and other members of their villages, to improve sanitation and hygiene which in turn will reduce disease and deaths from contaminated water. We just need one more toilet to be twinned then Trinty will have all its toilets affiliated with another country so if you can donate just a couple of pounds, we can really help flush poverty away.
Several members of Trinity took part in The Big Plastic Count this month. This is a citizen science project run by Greenpeace and Everyday Plastics and is a survey to see how much, and what types of plastics, households use on average in one week and then calculate their carbon footprint. From these results Greenpeace are able to lobby the Government to do more to encourage large corporations and industries to look at other forms of packaging for our food, cleaning and toiletries and DIY. It also encourages us as individuals to look at and take note of what we would perhaps just throw away without a second thought. Thank you to everyone who took part.
For the Parade Service the girls also wrote the prayers of intercession and these highlight their genuine concerns about our world, which echo many of the young peoples’ views across the globe. The following prayer, in an abbreviated form, is taken from their own
words:
"Dear Lord, we ask you to intervene to help the leaders of countries that are at war to negotiate with each other to restore peace and so save their people from experiencing loss, death, injury and destruction of homes, hospitals, buildings, animals and crops. We ask you to intervene with our planet and the animals, birds, fish and insects.
Please guide people so that they don’t destroy habitats and oceans, so they don’t cause ecological problems and global warming. Encourage people to think about their impact and to recycle and reuse where ever they can. We ask you to intervene to help those without their own home. Help them find a safe place to live and feel secure so they can thrive and feel as though their basic needs are met. We ask you to intervene to stop the campaigns for de-population so that it will help the less developed countries grow and become more sustainable and we ask you to intervene with people who are in situations they would rather not be in.
We ask you to intervene in our National General Election to encourage all those entitled to vote to cast their vote for the person/party that they really believe will look after all the people in this country, rather than just a limited group. And we ask that those in politics refrain from continually knocking down the opposition and instead build each other up, so they can work together to really achieve and move forward together positively.
Amen"
What powerful sentiments from our young people. If we all took just a bit more care of our planet, thought a bit more about our impacts on others and shared our resources more evenly then, perhaps, our young people can feel their voices are being heard. After all, the state we leave this world in is our legacy to them and all future generations.
Wishing you all a blessed Easter and if you can, try to buy easter eggs without the plastic packaging, if you can find them!