Ministries of Mercy - Life Ministries at 6363 9th Avenue North , St. Petersburg, FL 33710 US - Nativity Green Team Reflects on Getting Started

Nativity Green Team Reflects on Getting Started

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It takes an optimistic and patient soul to work on a parish green team because there will be setbacks and disappointments. The process is akin to the path of becoming a saint - and so it takes time and has its ups and downs. But the rewards when they happen are great.

At Nativity parish, our green team focused on building a recycling infrastructure. The idea was that if the congregation saw that Nativity was committed to reduce, re-use and recycle then they would begin to connect caring for creation with good stewardship. And changes would follow in their personal lives and businesses. But we needed first for the parish to set an example.

So we initiated recycling at our Novemberfest fair which draws about 150,000 people. We negotiated with the waste management vendor to provide a special price and a special container for recyclable material. The vendor provided a dozen or so collection bins. We negotiated and worked with our own Novemberfest volunteer team to allow the recycling to take place. And we had our recycling collection bins in place for the start of the fair.

As it turned out the fair goers tossed garbage into our recycle bins and we had to shut them down. We fell back to an alternate plan where our green team volunteers went through the trash containers on the site, pulling out the recyclable materials. We became trash pickers and we thought we had failed.

But, we ended up recycling about 20% of the real time waste, not so much through our efforts but through the efforts of the carnival people and food service people who worked at the Novemberfest and helped us out with the collection of recyclables. It was the cardboard that they collected - not the bottles and cans that we did - that filled the recycle container and spared the landfill.

The fair taught us a great lesson. The green team would have more success working with and influencing other existing parish organizations and ministries than as a stand-alone change agent working by ourselves.

Here are some real life examples of working with existing parish groups:

1. The campus maintenance and operations staff - they want to reduce costs - so they are interested in the cost savings aspect of reduce, re-use and recycle. We work with them on implementing ways to "green" the campus and reduce electricity and water use. We meet with them on an ongoing basis.

2. The School - the school children, their parents and the faculty have a major interest in being green. In our case the school already had its own green team. We worked with them in implementing a campus wide recycling program (including special recycling bins and a revised contract with our waste management vendor) and we continue to meet with them on an ongoing basis.

3. The Youth Ministry - they developed the idea of a parish green clean day which would clean the campus grounds, freshen up the landscape, and clean some interior buildings. We partnered with them to make it happen and work with them on an ongoing basis to make this green clean day a yearly parish event. 150 volunteers showed up for the first green clean day.

4. The Men's Club - they like to volunteer to work on cleanup or outdoor projects - so we keep in touch with them on projects as they come up.

5. The Ladies Guild - they hold monthly meetings and we will work with them on the January 2010 meeting where we will have speakers come in from TECO and County Solid Waste - to talk about saving money through energy efficiency and increasing recycling.

6. The Scouts - an Eagle project was to build a shrine to St. Francis on campus - the patron saint of ecology - we publicized the shrine and are looking to see how we can contribute to its maintenance. Girl scouts made signs for our Novemberfest recycling effort and earned merit badges.

And so on.

Our green team hopes to be viral - not trying to recruit a green army but instead trying to influence and work with existing active organizations to show care and respect for God's creation. We partner on the agenda - each group has its own goals and interests and we need to take that into account.

Our green team hopes to provide some leaven to the already existing ministries at the parish so that they may grow in a way that they have not grown in the past.

Our green team is working on a plan to institute a blessing of the plants day and on a plan to start a parish garden which would produce fruits and vegetables for our food pantry. And we look forward to more and better recycling at this year's Novemberfest.

None of that can or will happen without working with other ministries or groups helping us out.

So reach out to the active groups in your church, see if you can work out a common agenda, and see what you can partner on. The best people to work with are the young people - they have the greatest interest and the greatest stake.

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