Care for Creation Team

Care for Creation Team

Mission Statement:

Caring for Creation expresses a call to pursue justice for creation through active participation, solidarity, sufficiency, and sustainability. It states the commitments of the ELCA for pursuing wholeness for creation – commitments expressed through individual and community action, worship, learning, moral deliberation, and advocacy.

Care for Creation (C for C) Committee Members:

Bob Lindmeier, Rona Lukazewski, Alan Lukazewski, Chris Staveness, Joanne Gladden, Hadley Stang, Rob Schmidt

Ad Hoc members:

Sherryl Cobb, Sandra Linstroth, Sheryl Lindmeier, Bonnie Gilbertson, Karen Gipp

Team Updates:

View Important Recycling Information Here

Bob is checking out our new monitor sitting in the gathering area. It displays information from our solar panels in real time.

Pellitteri Waste Systems provides residential recycling services to the Greater Madison Area and throughout Dane County. Learn more about residential recycling.

 

 

Consider using a reusable water bottle rather than buying water in plastic bottles. One million plastic bottles are purchased in the US every minute according to Earth Day organizers. 1,500 plastic bottles are thrown away every second of every day. The consumption of plastic bottles is predicted to hit half a trillion every year. This far outstrips recycling efforts and will severely jeopardize our environment and our oceans. The World Economic Forum predicts that by the year 2050, the ocean will contain more plastic than fish.

Care for Creation Sharing Session:

Summary of ELCA mission statement: Caring for Creation expresses a call to pursue justice for creation through active participation, solidarity, sufficiency and sustainability, and states the commitments of the ELCA for pursuing wholeness for creation — commitments expressed through individual and community action, worship, learning, moral deliberation and advocacy.

Relating to the environment, the social statement says: As stewards of this world, we are called to care for the earth and examine our behaviors toward creation. While we need to take from the land for food and sustainability, we also need to be careful that we maintain good stewardship and do not exploit the wonderful things the earth provides.

To start the conversation, a summary of what we are trying to accomplish.

  • Become a congregation that reduces our negative impact on the climate as a whole by,
    • Reducing carbon emissions:
      • Through use of renewable energy sources
      • By being most efficient with our use of energy
      • By minimizing food waste
      • Maximizing recycling
    • Lowering congregational operating costs through use of more efficient management of our facilities which also lowers carbon emissions
    • Influence each congregant to think and act differently to nurture our environment
    • Impact our community of Oregon through awareness and collaborative efforts
  • Accomplishments:
    • Implemented a full solar array
    • Community showing of climate change documentary pre-pandemic
    • Church engineering and maintenance (Chris Staveness and Property Team) have been implementing the most efficient energy solutions as capital replacement needs come due:
      • Almost half of our lights throughout the church have been changed to LED bulbs which are about 90% more energy efficient than the Fluorescent light bulbs that were in their place.
      • We have changed out the water softener for the north end of the church with one that is at least 75% more efficient than the one that was there when it was new it was probably working at about 20% capacity so changing it out we are saving over 90% of the energy that we were using.
      • We have changed 3 air conditioners that are significantly more energy-efficient than the ones that are there and plan to change 9 more within the next several years.
      • We have moved thermostats that were in the wrong place and causing access energy use. We replaced all the thermostats in the whole church and are saving 35% of the energy because they are programmed to be more efficient.
      • We replaced all the paper towels and toilet paper dispensers in the church and we are using 40% less material because we went with high efficient paper products.
      • Changed out the front entryway carpets to ones we own so that we don’t get them washed every month and we don’t have the fuel costs of getting them here and there so we are saving a ton of money and energy cleaning them ourselves.
      • We have taken over the lawn care of the property and we mowed 8 fewer times than we did the years prior because it didn’t need it and it saves on fuel consumption.
      • Aaron Johnson, Chris Staveness along with the help of the Care for creation team has done a lot of work getting ready for energy star certification and will hopefully be official within the next couple months.
    • We are in the process of applying for Energy Star certification for the entire facility
    • Working on enhancing our recycling efforts
      • Recycling of communion cups through Terracycle and funded by donations

All that outlined, what are your questions?

What would you like to see us committed to doing?

What would you like to participate in or support?