Moving on from the Eco Church Bronze Award – thoughts from Michael Richards
Our church deserves credit for having been given the Bronze Award in respect of environmental initiatives. The question now is: what do we do to try and obtain a Silver Award? Many of you have kindly purchased my book entitled “Farming’s Role in the Green Agenda”, all proceeds going to church funds. In this connection have been asked by the Emmanuel ECO Group to write this contribution to the church magazine.
I devoted one chapter of my book to the subject of water harvesting. On my farm I have two large plastic tanks each of which holds up to 22,000 litres of water. I am thinking about acquiring a third tank. The water is collected from gutters and drainpipes on the farm buildings. This process is a larger version of the water butt system employed by some domestic users.
The church could benefit from developing its own water harvesting system. Quite apart from enhancing our ecological status, the collected rainwater could be used to advantage. Currently we use mains water to irrigate the church gardens. In dry weather we could be using, say ten gallons of water to give all the plants a thorough watering to reach the roots where it is needed. We might need to water the gardens, say three or four times a week. This translates to a requirement of thirty to forty gallons per month. Think how many gallons we should need to irrigate during a drought like the one we have experienced this year! This water, taken from the mains, costs us money; rainwater is free. Several of our congregation have gardens or allotments. Rather than give money to the water company, our gardeners might wish to bring a few receptacles to fill with harvested water and make a small donation to the church. I contend therefore that the ECO Group should consult, perhaps Cheesmur, to investigate how we could harvest rainwater to advantage.
Whilst on the subject of gardening I should point out that bare soil discharges carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which causes global warning. It is therefore advantageous to keep our soil well planted so that leaf cover limits this discharge of a greenhouse gas. Moreover any plant, through the process of photosynthesis, absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere thus reducing global warming. The plant then respires oxygen and water into the atmosphere both of which are essential to human, animal and plant life.
There remains the subject of the energy we consume and its associated cost. In this regard we should investigate, again by consulting Cheesmur, the viability of putting solar panels on our roof. Our electricity bill could be significantly reduced in this way. Undoubtedly this would involve a fairly large capital sum but it is to be noted that members of our congregation from time to time are called into higher service and, through their generosity, leave considerable sums to the church. I stress that I am of an age where I am not writing glibly about a different generation!
I do hope that my observations constitute some food for thought and that the ECO Group may consider them in due course.
Michael J Richards
Response to Michael Richards’ article:
Thank you for your article, Michael.
Here are a couple of responses from the Eco Church group:
We completely agree about rainwater harvesting and have already discussed placing at least one water butt attached to a downpipe on the left-hand side of the church. There are, in fact, several downpipes from the roof. One of the issues is that these are square metal pipes, which do not take a standard waterbutt fitting, but we hope to have these in place soon. Unfortunately, rainwater harvesting was not built into the original building design, and space for a large tank is limited.
We would also encourage people to join the local interactive water butt project! This uses waterbutts to help manage the flood risk caused by stormwater. Find out more from https://facebook.com/RefillEastbourne
You’ve also mentioned solar panels on the roof. This is something we’ve been working on quietly behind the scenes for several months. There are a number of technical challenges to this too, but we believe we’re getting to the point of having a viable design that will enable a significant reduction in our electricity bill. We’re planning to combine solar panels with sodium-ion battery storage. This is a new, much more environmentally friendly storage solution than the normal lithium-ion batteries. We’ve been obtaining quotes and identifying potential funding, and will be providing more information about this exciting project over the next few weeks.
As an EcoChurch group we are always open to new ideas and suggestions as we strive to reach the silver award (and maybe one day the gold award!). If anyone with a passion for caring for the environment and nature would like to join the group, they would be very welcome. Please speak to me or another member of the group for more information.
Stephen Brown