Greening Your Church

Many of the things that are talked about in connection with greening your home can also apply to greening your church — recycling, using green cleaners, practicing green lawn care, eliminating disposable products when possible and making sure the building is energy efficient. Of course, churches are composed of groups of people who may not all agree on every issue, but the first step in greening a church is calling attention to the matter.

Resources for greening your church:

•Get LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. Your church can decide how green it wants to become and pursue the chosen level of certification. A great way to start is to get involved with your local chapter of the US Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization dedicated to greening all of our existing buildings and new construction through LEED certification. Several churches have already gained LEED certification.

•Green your Palm Sunday with Eco-Palms. Here’s a New York Times article about them.

•Visit Massachusetts Interfaith Power and Light for some great resources. Some of their suggestions include taking stock of how much energy the church is using, looking at how space is being used and when it is used, and surveying equipment. They offer forms you can download to help with this process.

•Know your options for clean energy. Visit the US Department of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy as a first step. For more on clean energy, visit the Sierra Club’s articles.

•Visit EarthCare to download comprehensive resource guides about eco-management of churches.

•Be inspired by Boston’s historic Old North Church with its new LED lights. Here’s the CNN article.

If you’ve been involved with helping to green your church, please tell us about it.

flickr Photo Credit: Moreton Church, Dorset