Occasional
Hold a ‘no-car Sunday’. Where there are those with mobility difficulties organise a ‘pick up and take home’ service.
The Big Ask
With the youth group (or anyone else interested!), take on a church allotment.
Repeating Challenge
Hold a six-monthly second-hand sale and donate the money raised to the church or A Rocha.
One-hit Wonder
Form a ‘green group’ in your church to develop the church’s environmental commitment. If at all possible, include your vicar/one of the church leaders in the group.
One-hit Wonder
As a small/cell group take an evening to work out your combined ecological footprint. The World Wildlife Fund has a good calculator, found on their ‘one planet future’ page.
Repeating Challenge
Over a period of time work together to reduce your combined footprint. See how much you can reduce it by.
Think on This
Sign up to the Conservation Foundation’s Parish Pump News for lots of useful advice and inspiring stories.
Repeating Challenge
Run a campaign in your church for everyone to bring their own mugs each week, cutting down on the need to wash up (whilst of course still keeping some mugs available for visitors or those who forget).
Occasional
Conduct a survey of local pubs and/or shops on how much they recycle. Take the results to your local Council and discuss how the recycling rate could be improved.
Repeating Challenge
Install a ‘green’ notice-board (with, eg., car sharing groups, local bus timetables, contact details of local environmental groups, other green initiatives…).
Occasional
Hold a mission weekend with the theme, ‘Poverty, Wealth and the Environment’.
Repeating Challenge
Ensure that environmental issues are one of the criteria for choosing the church’s missionary partners.
Occasional
Have an annual visit to a local nature reserve.
Occasional
Get the youth group to conduct a survey of their schools to see how green they are. Look at what they could do in response.
The Big Ask
Hold a ‘green fair’ for your community/town/city, opening up your building for people to set up stall (eg. local council recycling or composting initiatives, local energy efficiency advisory, local Agenda 21 representative, local food stalls, Friends of the Earth and/or A Rocha group etc).