ECOChurch
As a Church we are working towards our own ECO awards, we are not doing this alone but as one of the RNWK group of Churches where we are all working together for our own EcoChurch accreditations.
The awards are based upon the usual Bronze, Silver, Gold sequence.
Awards are achieved based upon our approach to a variety of ECO values from things like using Carbon Neutral suppliers for Electricity, Economical resource use, we do really well on economic use of water (not even having a supply connected helps here). Some of the targets are wholly within the Church and some are lifestyle of the members and includes Community Impact. Do we ride a bike or walk rather than driving a car. Banking and Investments Companies we use ought to be considered Ethical. Its quite interesting.
You can see/download sample questions on this web site. You can register for yourselves as a family or group. It can make for interesting discussion to understand why some aspects are considered important.
On our first work through the questionnaire we came out fairly well, all things considered with Golds, Silvers and Bronzes with one unclassified. We are now looking at the items that are within our control and would benefit from improvement. Things like replacing halogen bulbs with LED equivalent ones could save significantly on Electrical energy consumption. In our case we estimate that year one bill savings will effectively pay for the new bulbs and leave a little cash in hand.
We need to consider other areas that are perhaps due for revision and what we need to reasonably do in order to improve our markings.
This is an ongoing project.
Sample Questions web page