We have had a busy few weeks!
The Eco quiz held in March brought out some competitive tendencies with five teams showing off their skills in identifying flowers, bird calls and climate themes in musicals!
Using duplo bricks to explore the carbon footprint of households in Menston proved an interesting challenge - Menston comes in at 21 tonnes of CO2, higher than the GB average of 16, Bradford 15! Not a great accolade. To reduce the carbon footprint of the evening, the participants enjoyed a veggie meal plus cake with plenty of food for thought!
For those who want to know, the carbon footprint breaks down as follows:
Goods/services 7.8
Housing = 4.9
Food = 4.7
Travel = 4.1
Waste = less than 1.
In April, 11 of us visited the Recycling and Energy Recovery Centre in East Leeds where domestic rubbish ( black bins) is incinerated to produce electricity for the grid and the hot water by product is used to heat homes - the Leeds PIPES scheme. We all dressed up in high vis/goggles/ gloves etc and peered into the furnace which burns the rubbish at 850 degrees. The furnace is monitored 24/7 as are the emissions from the chimney which are very limited. The ash produced from the furnace is used for road building. It was really interesting and the iconic building has a green wall on its south side with over 111,000 plants and is home to kestrels!
On Easter Saturday, an all age event was held in the churchyard to kickstart our community vegetable growing project with the children sowing carrot, beetroot, spring onions, lettuce seeds and potatoes in pots kindly donated by members of the congregation. We have set up a watering rota and are hoping for great things. An Easter Garden was also created plus bee/bug hotels for the churchyard.
We are planning a tree trail for the churchyard and hope to get more people involved in our green initiatives over the next few months.
Eco church team: Marilyn, Sally, Catherine, Jeanne-Claire and Matthew