CITY URC has been awarded a Bronze Award in the Eco Church rankings. This is a significant step on the church’s eco-journey that was relaunched recently with the appointment of Julia Edwards as our City Green Friend, in conjunction with the eco-drive of URC Wales Synod.
Awards come in Gold, Silver and Bronze and are measured across five key areas:
Worship and Teaching; Buildings and Land; Engagement with the local Community; Global Campaigns; and Personal Lifestyles. To qualify for an Award, each church has to submit a detailed audit that covers all these key areas.
Julia, Alison and Liz complete the detailed Eco audit that led to the Bronze Award
The City Church audit showed the church ranked as Gold for Worship and Teaching;
Silver for Buildings and Land and for Community and Global engagement; and Bronze for Lifestyle. Overall, that meant City could apply for the Bronze Award.
City is registered in the UK Eco-Church scheme, run by A Rocha, and Julia leads a small informal group to focus the work. The audit to update the status of the church was completed by Julia, Alison McQueen, and Liz Meek, who were helped by Bob Oram, warden, with his extensive knowledge of the church buildings.
Alison said; ‘We are fairly happy with this, however our real desire is to work actively to achieve a Silver award – and as soon as possible. To do this, we need to work together as a church community and spend more time thinking about how we live as individuals in relation to living a Greener lifestyle.
‘We could each learn how to calculate our individual Carbon Footprint, think about how we travel to and from church, the way we use our money, the food and clothes we buy, and how we save or donate our money.
‘We will continue to focus on the way we care for our building, and use our land. Our garden project could enable us to create a green oasis for wildlife in the city centre.’
Alison said the Carbon Footprint for the church was calculated using data from the year 2022, when we emitted 35 tonnes of carbon. She stressed: ‘We need to have a debate as a church. Should we offset this as a church by paying a reputable green offsetting company?
This is carbon we have already emitted. ‘Our ultimate aim is to reduce our Carbon Footprint to as near to zero as possible by 2030. This is in line with the wider URC Environmental policy which aims for Net Zero by 2030 and we should also be considering ways to set targets on how we will achieve this.’
Alison concluded: ‘These are difficult issues to think about, but as Christians who are serious about our concern for God’s creation, our world, we believe that concern for Climate Justice and Nature restoration is an integral part of living a Christian life, loving our neighbours and serving God faithfully.’
