The other day I ran into Heidi of Project Porchlight, and I mentioned to her that my church would be game for helping pass out compact fluorescent light bulbs (that’s their mission – in order to reduce the demand on the grid and lower our carbon footprint). She suggested that instead of holding a special training for us and giving us a route to go canvas/give away bulbs, she recommended that I just take a bag of bulbs and give them away at my church. Ha! Ok! :)
So this past Sunday, St. Andrew’s Christian Church of Burlington had a collaborative outdoor worship service with Colchester Baptist and First Baptist Church of Burlington (whose basement we currently use) and I gave away compact fluorescent light bulbs. People loved it. (Of course they loved it! They were free, and they’ll save people money, and they’ll help the environment).
I’ve been impressed lately with two things (one of which I'll blog about later): I believe consumers would more easily drive the market towards sustainable choices if sustainable choices were available. For example, if I could choose to have my laptop shipped in sustainable packaging instead of Styrofoam packing peanuts (even if it was like $2 more) I’d choose that. If I could choose biodegradable shopping bags over conventional shopping bags, I’d choose that too. If I could go to a restaurant and have the choice of locally produced or organic food options I would hands-down no question choose that. But I feel that many times those choices just don’t exist. I see it as my job as a consumer to demand better options. This is also effectively what the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative has been doing: creating opportunity for sustainable living where it previously was not an option. Everyone deserves the opportunity to live without polluting. And if polluting is, well, sin, then I believe it is the role of the church to help facilitate these kinds of opportunities. We should be helping people out of their environmental transgressions.
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Seattle is about to start a city-wide thing where every grocery store will be required to charge at least $.10 per plastic bag. Originally they wanted to charge for paper too to encourage people to buy reusable bags, but this is at least a step in the right direction.
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