A Call for Environmental Stewardship
“The earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof” – Psalm 24:1
Each year, Earth Day – April 22 – marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Celebration of Earth Day has grown from 20 million Americans who took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies in 1970 to over a billion people in more than 192 countries today. In Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Psalm 115:16 says “the highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to man.” We have been given stewardship responsibilities over the earth, to care for and protect God’s handiwork, to be good stewards of the natural world. These obligations, to respect and protect the natural environment, appear throughout the Bible, often referring to just the kinds of problems we face today: destruction of wildlife and habitat, and pollution of our food, air and water.
What can we do this Earth Day? Most of us are already conserving, recycling, reusing, reducing, and re-purposing on a daily basis but like a lot of things, we can always do more. My challenge to you is to learn of at least one new article you can recycle that you haven’t in the past. If each of us prevents one more item from going into the landfill, think of the impact that would make times the number of parishioners at St. James’.
Last year, St. James’ parishioners were asked to share conservation & recycling tips – included below are a few of the comments that were shared. They are all great ways for us to be better stewards of our environment.
Greg Miller said he has been recycling since 1968, way before it because fashionable. Elaine Miller said she uses plastic containers from baked goods on her kitchen counter to collect coffee grounds which are then placed on roses or planters.
The Lacy Family uses an attractive wicker picnic basket in the kitchen to collect all non-food recyclables. They compost food scraps with yard waste and reuse the plastic newspaper bags for picking up after the dogs. They also don’t buy bottled water or any over-packaged items, instead bagging their own. Old towels and bedding are taken to the animal shelter.
Joan Kimber runs her dishwasher and washing machine only with a full load. She keeps a plastic container handy to catch rinse water from vegetables and uses this to water outdoor plants. Joan “re-purposes” worn out socks and t-shirts as cleaning/polishing rags and unplugs TVs, printers and transformer and turns down the water heater when away from home for a time.
John Kimber always recycles toner and ink cartridges and makes note pads out of extra printed paper sheets. John captures cold water when waiting for hot water and uses it to water plants or to flush the toilet. He uses a shredder to chop up leaves and branches for his compost bin and uses the compost to amend the vegetable garden soil.
Greg Feeney keeps multiple recycling baskets in the house and scans articles into a file on the computer to eliminate extra paper.
Bud Spalding cuts the tops off half-gallon milk cartons and uses them to collect food scraps for the green waste bin.
Alice Johnson said they hadn’t watered their lawn since October 2013 and were counting flushes to see how many times 1.66 gal. go down the drain!
Sandra Motley uses paper bags to collect junk mail and “dry” recyclables all week and then puts the bag in the recycle bin. Sandra also flattens all cans and plastic water bottles making them easier to collect and store.
Meg & John Amouroux keep a small bin out in the open in their kitchen to collect recyclables because if it’s “out in the open,” its accessibility makes for easy and frequent use. When in doubt, they put it in the recycling bin because they know it will be sorted; otherwise, it’d go straight to the landfill and they might have missed an opportunity to recycle.
Bruce Roberts takes hazardous waste to the drop off center on Boyce Road and recycles ink cartridges at Staples. Bruce says his key to recycling is placing containers in the house close to where he needs them making it easier to recycle and compost.
Frankie McLeod has been recycling for years, long before they moved to Acacia Creek. She is thankful Acacia has a recycling system set up through the local area-wide recycling program.
The Earth Day movement began small in the United States and is now the largest secular holiday in the world. God has given us responsibility for stewardship of our environment. Hopefully, the Lord will look down on us and say: “Well done, thou good and fruitful servants!”
~Gail Blalock, Past Stewardship Chair