Earlier this year St Peter & St Paul Church, Uppingham in the Rutland Deanery were awarded their Eco Church Silver. This was a huge achievement considering it was only a year on from them receiving their bronze award.
Christobel Price, Reader and Eco Church Leader shares how they made the huge step from bronze to silver...
 Photo courtesy of Clark PR & Media |
“Having gained our Bronze in May 2023 we began to raise the profile of our efforts with the local community. While our focus was to raise funds to build a toilet block for a school in the Congo, we also highlighted the work of The Community Fridge, a fridge containing surplus food from local supermarkets and retailers where anyone can make a discretionary monetary donation for the food should they need it, and a shop that encourages less packaging and using eco-friendly products, called Simple Life.
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We have a monthly prayer calendar in which the church is encouraged to pray for various parts of our world and the prayers are written by members of the team. We have a designated area for wildlife with water and a bug hotel which the young people have helped to create.
The congregation is encouraged to engage with national and international events e.g. No Mow May, Garden Bird Watch etc. We encourage the congregation to think about food miles and reducing single-use packaging and we highlight the work of the Uppingham community, their litter picking, Uppingham in Bloom and Feast Day.
Working towards these goals has been a huge learning curve for us all, because the more we looked the more we realised how our behaviour and choices added to the problems. We would all like to leave this planet a bit better off for future generations, with the hope that they too will see and carry on the work to heal some of the damage we have caused. This is an amazing place God gave us to live in, and it's magic never ceases to bring me up short; the textures, colours, shapes, fragrances, all the diversity of God's amazing creation.
Our sights are now very firmly set on our next target and we hope to engage with the local schools during out work to reach Gold.”
Christobel and her team have achieved wonderful things in a relatively short time. If you are inspired to start your own eco journey, find out more about Eco Church here.