Environmental Guild
Environmental Guild Information
We believe that God entrusted all of creation to our safekeeping and that we are therefore called to be responsible stewards of God’s beloved earth. Accordingly, St. David’s commits to take an ever active and holistic approach to environmental stewardship through education, service, and sustainable practices.
God’s breathing life into humankind and providing a fruitful earth for our well-being was accompanied by the mandate for us to till and “keep” God’s creation. Gen. 2:15. This mandate implies that we have a loving, caring, and “keeping” relationship with all of God’s creation, including each other, in much the same way that God keeps us.
Likewise, Christ taught us to cultivate loving and compassionate relationships, with God and with each other. He instructed us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Now more than ever, our love must extend not only to the neighbors we encounter today and in our own geographic community, but also to those across the globe and downstream from us in time. What kind of world do we want to bequeath to our children, grandchildren, and more distant descendants? What about our duty to love our neighbors who will inhabit this fragile Earth in the future? The well-being of these future neighbors will be saved only by our actions, not by our good intentions alone.
The Environmental Guild works to suggest ways to balance the needs of the St. David’s community of today with those of tomorrow. One of its most successful programs to date involves recycling. St. David’s uses recycled paper for all of its printing needs and recycles its used paper, plastics, glass, and aluminum foil. Additionally, St. David’s is an official City of Austin drop-off site for proper battery disposal (don’t throw them in the trash; place them in our collection drawer!); we also encourage you to bring in your old ink cartridges, eyeglasses, cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, prescription bottles, CD’s, and aluminum-can pull tabs for recycling or reuse. The receptacle for these items is outside the St. David’s book shop near the main church entrance. Recycling can be seen as one way to care for God’s creation and fulfill the imperative to love our neighbor. No doubt you have heard many times that making a conscious effort to reduce, reuse, and recycle our resources is good for the environment, including reducing the demand on our municipal landfills, but it is important to remember that these same efforts benefit people as well. With a little extra effort we can leave the world a better place for those who come after us while we continue to serve those around us.
The Environmental Guild has also been successful in increasing the use of reusable items in place of Styrofoam cups, plates, and bowls; Café Divine uses ceramic coffee mugs, as does the Trinity Center, and the Sunday School classes now use washable water cups. The parking garage no longer issues paper tickets upon entry, saving both paper and expense. Also, the church has switched to using compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) instead of standard incandescent light bulbs. These are but a few of the changes the church has made in response to the suggestions of the Environmental Guild. Look for our posters, bulletin board, and tips in Looking Ahead describing how you can contribute to this effort to extend stewardship to all of God’s creation now and in the future. If you would like to be a part of this energetic group, which meets once a month and hosts the annual parish-wide Earth Day Celebration in April, please .
St. David’s is also a member of the Interfaith Environmental Network of Austin (IEN) and is active with the IEN’s Energy Action Team, which is a group of representatives from Austin’s faith communities organized to address the challenges and opportunities we face today with global warming, climate change, and meeting the world’s future energy needs.
GreenFaith Certification Program
The designer and maker of the earth established the earth, not creating it to be a wasteland, but designing it to be lived in. Is. 45:18
Throughout the world, Christian communities are recognizing that they are called to care for Creation and are putting their beliefs into action for the earth. At St. David’s, we are embracing this calling by taking part in the challenging GreenFaith Certification Program, the first-ever interfaith environmental certification program for houses of worship. Over a period of two years, we will undertake a large number of environmental initiatives. By successfully completing these efforts, we will earn recognition as a GreenFaith Sanctuary.
After announcing our plans in August 2010, St. David’s has been busy with this effort. Our Vestry adopted a resolution in support of this undertaking, and our Rector voiced his strong commitment to it; we created a Green Team with members across many different areas of the church to oversee and assist with the project; we drafted an Environmental Mission Statement to guide our efforts (see bolded statement at top of this page); we conducted comprehensive institutional audits and used the results to craft an environmental action plan for the Certification Program’s two years. We are well on our way to successfully completing the Program in May 2012! Stay tuned for details on a parish-wide celebration of our efforts.
GreenFaith, an interfaith environmental coalition, is our partner and guide in this ambitious undertaking. GreenFaith is one of the oldest religious-environmental coalitions in the world and will provide us with guidelines, assistance, and resources to help us become an environmental leader. With their help, we will integrate environmental themes into our worship, religious education, facility maintenance, and social outreach. We will encourage our members to take meaningful steps to green their own lives. We will also develop relationships with environmental groups in our area and reach out to other houses of worship to encourage them to engage these issues.
Through this process, St. David’s has the chance to play an important leadership role in the development of an environmentally just and sustainable world and to protect creation for future generations. This is one of the great moral challenges of our time, and we are committed to doing our part in response. We hope that all our members will join us in this effort and help our church become a model and a beacon of hope for others.
Learn more about GreenFaith.
Recycling
Congratulations St. David’s! Thanks to your efforts, the recycling program has greatly increased over the past several years. Just look at the volume of materials you have kept out the landfills this past year:
Ink Cartridges: 631 collected. The proceeds are given to the Capital Area Food Bank.
Cell Phones: 96 collected. Phones are sold to a re-manufacturer, and the proceeds are used by the Environmental Guild in carrying out its environmental-stewardship ministries.
Glasses: 117 collected. Glasses (prescription, reader, and sunglasses) are distributed to needy recipients through the Trinity Center and the organization OneSight.
CD’s: 529 collected. These are donated to the Goodwill, which resells or recycles them.
Batteries: Over a ton (too many to count!). We are an official City of Austin drop-off site, with the hazardous waste department picking up from us monthly.
Pull Tabs: Tabs are given to the Ronald McDonald House. We don’t count the tabs, but the program appears to be growing considerably.
Prescription Bottles: It is estimated that the number of recycled prescription bottles was over 5,000.
Please note that St. David’s is NOT equipped to handle disposal of CFLs; please take these to locations such as IKEA or Home Depot for proper disposal.
Learn how you can help the recycling efforts at St. David’s with your drop-offs and more on why you should use compact fluorescent light bulbs.
Learn more about the Interfaith Environmental Network.
