CUMC Green Team

Green your summer!!

2011-06-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

Join the Christ United Methodist Church Green Team for a month of great green programming! Each week in July,we're sponsoring different events designed to get our church - and the community - thinking, helping, and even cleaning in greener ways than ever before. The schedule is as follows:

Wednesday, July 6. Movie Screening: “King Corn.” In this thought-provoking documentary, two college best friends move to America’s Corn Belt to plant an acre of corn—the nation’s most grown and most subsidized grain—and then follow it into the U.S. food supply. Their findings call into question our country’s current fast-food lifestyle and shed light on exactly what we’re consuming. Special kids’ activities are also planned. 6:30 p.m. Church Sanctuary. No signup required.

Thursday, July 14. Helping the Homeless. We’re partnering with Fairview UME to prepare a meal for Chattanooga’s homeless community using the fresh, organic vegetables and greens from our church’s “Gardening for God” ministry. Church and community volunteers are needed to prepare and serve the meal. Sign up at church office or online at www.christplace.org.

Wednesday, July 20. Green Your Clean. Detergents, spray-disinfectants, and products are supposed to keep our homes and our clothes cleaner—and, in theory, us safer. But mounting evidence suggests that certain chemicals in cleaning products can cause health problems like asthma, allergies, attention disorders, and even cancer. In this hands-on session, we’ll take a look at environmentally friendly ways to clean—and even mix up some of our own! Bring an old spray bottle or half-gallon bottle, and we’ll provide the rest! (You may also bring unwanted traditional cleaners for proper disposal.) Door prizes will be given! 6:30 p.m. Church Multi-Purpose Room. Please sign up in church office or online so we’ll know how many supplies we’ll need.

Wednesday, July 27. Local and Organic—Why Does it Matter? We hear these buzz words all the time, but what do they really mean ... and more importantly, why do they really matter? Join experts from Chattanooga’s Crabtree Farms as we learn more about understanding our “local food shed” and growing our own vegetables. We’ll also work side by side to collect a harvest from the Christ Church vegetable garden. Special kids’ activities, with emphasis on families harvesting together. 6:30 p.m. Church Multi-Purpose Room, outdoor garden.

Children are welcome, and special kids’ activities will be provided at all events.

Go green - get outside!

2011-04-07T18:30:00.000-07:00

Studies show that spending time outdoors sparks creativity, promotes health and fitness, adn can even help kids do better in school. Here are some fun ways to get your family outside and into the fresh air.

Discover a Hidden World! Spark your family's natural curiousity with this idea from "Last Child in the Woods" author Richard Louv. Cover a patch of dirt with a board, wait a couple of days, then lift it up to see how many species are living underneath it. Return periodically to find out what's new.

Make a Nature Map. Take a series of walks through your neighborhood to observe your surroundings. When you're back home, see which family member can draw the most accurate map using natural landmarks only - a stream, a field of wildflowers, a fallen tree, etc.

Go Letterboxing. This increasingly populr activity turns a walk in the woods into a treasure hunt. Participants print a list of clues from such websites as letterboxing.org, then use those clues to find one of thousands of letterboxes hidden in outdoor locations around the country.

Explore Nature at Night. Seeing the world in a new light - moonlight! - is an eye-opening experience that can hook a kid on the outdoors for life. You can look for plants or insects that glisten or glow in the evening light, listen for animals, or just stare at the stars. Go to stardate.org for stargazing tips and to learn when there's a full moon.

Volunteer for a Cause. Researchers natoinwide depend on citizen scientists (often volunteers with no formal training) to help collect data about the natural world. These volunteers might keep tabs on birds for Project Pigeon Watch or planting flowers to get the buzz on bees for the Great Sunflower Project. To find a study near you, go to scienceforcitizens.net or sas.org.

Article courtesy of Family Fun Magazine; photo credit: graur razvan ionut and freedigitalphotos.net.

Springtime at Crabtree

2011-03-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

Seedlings grow in the greenhouse at Crabtree Farms. You can purchase some of these very plants at Crabtree's spring plant sale.

The Crabtree Farms spring festival and plant sale is the perfect way to kick off this year's growing season - and it's right around the corner! On April 16 and 17, you'll be able to buy from more than 180 varieties of plants, including heirloom tomatoes, yummy herbs, berry bushes, and beautiful annuals. All of these plants are cultivated in the greenhouse at Crabtree using sustainable methods, which result in healthier and more highly productive plants. (For a full list of plants available, click here.)

In addition to the sale, guests can attend workshops where they'll learn more about composting, container/raised bed gardening, and rain barrel making. And master gardeners will be available to answer specific questions local gardeners may have.

For more information about Crabtree Farms, or for directions to the sale, visit their website at http://www.crabtreefarms.org/. See you at the sale!

Hands needed to help with harvest

2011-03-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

- Matthew 9:37-38

He sat at a table all alone at the Community Kitchen. He was wearing a dirty shirt and holey jeans. His face was aged by the years he had spent living on the street. When he saw the large basket full of cabbage that I was carrying in the door, his blank face broke into a beautiful toothless smile. At that moment I experienced a connection with this man I had never met before. I saw Jesus in him. I saw life. I saw life in mid-May when we came upon a bird's nest with eggs in the middle of the cucumber plot. We carefully picked around that nest making sure we never touched it. By June there was a small featherless bird and in July we watched that little bird fly away for the first time. These are just a couple of the many memories that I have from the past two years of being a part of the Gardening for God ministry. This garden brings life to our community and to our church.

Spring is just around the corner and this is going to be an exciting year for the garden here at Christ UMC. If you want to do something exciting and simple this summer with your family, along with giving to those in need in our community, then please think about joining the Gardening for God ministry. We are looking for hands to help harvest. This is a great opportunity to meet and fellowship with other members of the church. We will harvest every Wednesday and Saturday at 9 a.m. from the middle of May until August. Harvesting takes only 30 minutes and you do not even have to commit to coming every week. Our goal for the garden this year is 1600 pounds of fresh vegetables. Come and help us reach our goal.

If you want to help but don't want to get dirty, we are also looking for volunteers to help deliver the food to the organizations that we give to. If you would like to be a part of this ministry, please call Emily Dykstra at 933-4440.

Come sow seeds with us too:

Saturday, March 12, 10 AM - Planting of cool season crops
Saturday, April 23, 10 AM - Planting of warm season crops

Emily Dykstra
Gardening for God Ministry and CUMC Green Team

Sporting Green

2011-02-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

No, we're not talking about golf ... we're talking about ways to make your sports and other spring/summer activities more environmentally friendly. Earlier this week we shared some equipment tips; today it's all about the activities themselves.

One of the easiest - and most significant - things we can all do is pick up litter. If every sports fan picked up and properly disposed of just one piece of litter per year, more than 1,480 tons of unsightly trash could be removed from trails, beaches, lakes, rivers, forests, oceans, and other fragile ecosystems. That's enough to fill 185 garbage trucks! And it goes without saying that you should always dispose of your own garbage in a properly marked container.

Here are some other sports-specific tips:

Baseball/Softball - You can save energy by scheduling daytime games for your baseball and softball leagues. A single field can use an average of 72,000 kwh of energy annually for nighttime lighting. This much energy could keep your house lit for 60 years! In the U.S., more than 33 million youth participate in organized ball teams. If just 10 percent of these teams rescheduled one evening game for a daylight hour, the energy saved could broadcast MLB's all-star game on 11 million TV's.
Basketball - Take your daytime pickup game outside. You'll save energy as well as wear and tear on the indoor court. Gymnasium lighting can consume over 60,000 kwh per year, much of which isn't needed during the day anyway. If you get the chance, check out one of the more than 100 courts around the country made from the soles of recycled athletic shoes - they're cropping up in lots of major cities, including Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C.
Football and soccer - If you have the choice, choose playing on natural grass over artificial turf. Natural grass is renewable, and clippings can be composted. Grasses produce oxygen, remove air pollutants, filter rainwater, and maintain cooler surface temperatures. Artificial turf production is energy intensive and uses synthetic materials, none of which are recyclable. And artificial fields last for an average of just 10 years, after which they are pulled up and taken to - you guessed it - the landfill.
Golf - Try visiting one of the hundreds of conservation-minded courses in the U.S. that have committed to decreasing water consumption, reducing chemicals, preserving native landscapes, and protecting wildlife habitats. If an additional 1 percent of the 16,000 courses in the U.S. adopted water conservation strategies, we'd save enough water to restore a wetland the size of Augusta National Golf Club.
Surfing - When you're vying for better beach access, remember to keep your vehicle on paved roads or marked pathways, and never drive across sand dunes. You'll save on gas, protect coastal habitats, prevent erosion, and ensure a future of good surf.
Tennis - Play outdoor tennis during daylight hours in order to prevent the need for energy-intensive nighttime lighting. Lighting for a single court can consume more than 4,700 kwh of energy per year, enough to power the average household for about six months.

_______

These simple steps give the earth the biggest impact and require just a little effort on our part.
Green sports tips courtesy of The Green Book: The everyday guide to saving the planet one simple step at a time.

Spring is in the air

2011-02-22T12:20:00.000-08:00

With apologies to the regular readers we have - or may have once had - the Christ Church Green Team blog is back up and running! We took a break to regroup a bit, but the Green Team is back and ready for action this spring and summer. One of the coolest things we're planning is a month-long Green celebration during the month of July ... stay tuned for more information as the summer gets closer.

In the meantime, spring is right around the corner, and with the warmer weather come outdoor activities ... including lots of sports! No matter what you choose to play, it's likely that you can take small steps to make your sports a little greener:

Equipment:
Bags - Choose duffel bags and backpacks made from recycled materials over those made from petroleum-derived virgin polyester or PVC, which is less recyclable. For each bag purchased, you could safe the equivalent of 15 two-liter soda bottles from going into landfills.
Balls - If you buy tennis balls (for yourself or your pet), consider purchasing the pressureless variety. Pressureless tennis balls are not only longer lasting than their pressurized counterparts, but they're sold in a recyclable paper box or mesh bag instead of plastic or metal. There are 360 million tennis balls manufactured each year; if an additional 25 percent of these were pressureless, the plastic tubes saved would stretch from Queens, NY, to Wimbledon, England.
Bikes - Choose a bike with a steel frame over an aluminum frame and you'll conserve at least 25 kwh of energy. Steel frames can be made of recycled materials, whereas aluminum frames must be manufactured from new ore, and therefore require more energy to make.
Bats - Since aluminum is the most energy-intensive of all materials made in the U.S., consider using a bat made of renewable wood or even bamboo. You'll help reduce pollution and conserve the energy equivalent of almost a gallon of gasoline per bat. If one in ten Little League players opted for non aluminum bats, the total energy saved could transport 10,000 fans from all over the country to watch the Little League World Series in Pennsylvania.
Water - Water is a must in the sports world - it replenishes the body, and it's important to keep plenty on hand. For many athletes, though, this means cases and cases of plastic water bottles - bottles which eventually end up in landfills. Instead, buy an aluminum water bottle and refill it. If two of three sports fans refilled a water bottle rather than buying a new one each time, it would save about as many plastic bottles as there are people in the U.S.
Borrow or buy used! - Try purchasing used equipment. If 5 percent of the money spent on new sporting goods were directed at used items instead, Americans could save $250 million per year - enough to buy solar panels for 20,000 houses.

Later this week, we'll share ideas for greening up your participation in spring and summer sports!

________

Green sports tips courtesy of The Green Book: The everyday guide to saving the planet one simple step at a time.

Lunch-time waste ... it's staggering

2010-08-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Facts compiled and reported by reuseit.com ...

The Problem

The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 780,000 tons of plastic and polystyrene cups and plates were discarded in 2008.
The Container Recycling Institute claims that 2.81 million juice boxes were sold in the U.S. in 2006.
An independent study done in June of 2010 by the Environmental Law Foundation found toxic levels of lead in more than 40 different juices and juice boxes.
The EPA estimates nearly 4 million tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were produced in 2008. Of those, 3,570,000 tons (90%) were discarded. This is almost triple the amount discarded the first year plastic bag numbers were tracked (1,230,000 tons in 1980).Annual worldwide production and use of plastic material has rocketed from 5 million tons in the 1950s to 100 million tons in 2000.
Estimates by the BBC and CNN claim that anywhere from .5% to 3% of all bags winds up recycled.
In good circumstances, some plastics will take more than 20 years to degrade. In less ideal circumstances (land fills or as general refuse), plastic refuse will take more than 1,000 years to degrade. The extremely slow decomposition rate of plastics means they will drift on the ocean for untold years.
A U.N. study from 2006 stated that every square mile of the ocean has 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in it. The same study also stated that 10% of the plastic produced every year worldwide winds up in the ocean, 70% of which finds its way to the ocean floor, where it will likely never degrade.
Plastic cutlery is non-biodegradable, can leach toxic chemicals when handled improperly, and is widely used. Worldcentric.org estimates 40 billion plastic utensils are used every year in just the United States. The majority of these are thrown out after just one use.

The Impact

When plastics break down, they don't biodegrade, they photodegrade. This means the materials break down to smaller toxic fragments which contaminate soil, waterways, and animals upon digestion.
Refuse plastic absorbs pre-existing organic pollutants, including Bisphenol A (BPA) and polychlorinated biphenyls(PCBs).
The Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry has this to say about PCBs: "Animals that ate food containing large amounts of PCBs over short periods of time had mild liver damage and some died. Animals that ate smaller amounts of PCBs in food over several weeks or months developed various kinds of health effects, including anemia; acne-like skin conditions; and liver, stomach, and thyroid gland injuries."

The Solution

The solution is to embrace a cultural shift away from use-and-toss mentality. Use durable, long-lasting containers that will last years rather than disposable sandwich wraps, chip bags, fruit salad or pudding cups.
Bento boxes are a perfect example of a solution to disposable sandwich wraps; they are compartmentalized, allowing one to bring up to four separate dishes without using a single bag or wrap.
Stop using disposable napkins and instead opt for durable, washable cloth napkins that won't wind up in a landfill.
Use a high-quality water bottle to bring a drink instead of a disposable container (like a juice box). Thermal-insulated ones will even keep your drink as cold or as hot as when you packed it.
Don't use paper bags. A study on the life cycle of three types of disposable bags (single-use plastic, paper, and compostable plastic) showed that both compostable plastic and paper bags require more material per bag in the manufacturing process. This means "higher consumption of raw materials in the manufacture of the bags...[and] greater energy in bag manufacturing and greater fuel use in the transport of the finished product. ...The added requirements of manufacturing energy and transport for the compostable and paper bag systems far exceed the raw material use in the standard plastic bag system." (from a peer reviewed Boustead Consulting & Associates report)

See what you can do this school or work year to be part of the solution!

Packing a waste-free lunch

2010-08-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

It's back-to-school time, and for many busy parents this also means a return to lunch-packing. Did you know that the typical child generates 67 pounds of lunchtime trash per year? With more families trying to save money by brown bagging it that's a lot of waste - and money - going into the trash. Creating a waste-free lunch kit is smart ... and it's one of the easiest ways to significantly reduce your consumption of use-and-toss items - and save money (about $371 annually).

Reuseit.com has compiled five great ways to reduce the waste your family generates during lunches on the go.

Come back later this week for some staggering facts and figures related to our culture's near-epidemic use of tossable lunch materials.

How does your garden grow?

2010-07-15T15:35:00.000-07:00

Those of you who attend Christ Church might already know this, but we have a beautiful organic vegetable garden! It's part of the "Gardening for God" ministry, and its harvest is donated to local food charities.

God has again blessed our garden harvest!

Here are some amazing harvest totals (as of June 29, 2010):

Cabbage: 38 pounds
Cauliflower: 26 pounds
Lettuce: 33 pounds
Carrots: 24 pounds
Squash: 51 pounds
Zucchini: 83 pounds
Cucumbers: 140 pounds
Potatoes: 67 pounds

Wow! Gardening for God coordinator Emily Dykstra reports that the volunteers' hard work is paying off and helping to feed the homeless of Chattanooga who come each day to the Community Kitchen. The workers there are always so grateful when they see us drive up with our bounty two days each week. We get the same response when we deliver the produce to the Chattanooga Food Bank and St. Andrews Center -- thanks over and over.

Volunteers are needed to water the garden and to help with harvesting. Watering is assigned a week at a time (and we need volunteers for the last week of July, plus the first two weeks of August). Harvest times are Wednesday at 9 a.m. and Sundays at 6 p.m. It only takes about 30 minutes and is a lot of fun. Please join us.

If you're interested in helping, please respond to this post in the "comments" section, and we'll put you in touch with Emily. Thanks!

Mmmm ... blackberry picking

2010-07-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

Chattanooga's own Crabtree Farms offers pick-your-own blackberries ... starting tomorrow at 9 a.m.! Make your picking even greener by bringing your own recycled container to store them in! Word on the street is that the berries are HUGE and so sweet!

Celebrate local food!

2010-06-23T20:07:00.000-07:00

New Food Economy Week began today, and the new-ish Main Street Farmers' Market has planned a week full of activities to celebrate!

Here's the schedule of events:

Thursday June 24: Local foods potluck at Crabtree Farms - Bring a dish and your favorite recipe featuring local ingredients, 5 p.m.
Saturday June 26: Area restaurants feature local specials - Support your Local Food Economy by dining out at 212 Market, St John's Restaurant, St John's Meeting Place or Niko's on the Southside
Sunday June 27: Support local farms and artisans at the Chattanooga Market, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Tuesday June 29: Bread, Brats & Beer on Bikes! Enjoy freshly baked bread from Niedlov's Breadworks and sausages from Link 41 with a bike tour that begins at Link 41 (217 East Main Street) and stops along the way at local breweries, 6 p.m.
Wednesday June 30: Local blueberries are ripe and ready! Celebrate this summer favorite at Main Street Farmers Market's Blueberry Fest 2010, 4 to 6 p.m.

The Main Street Farmer's Market is located on Main Street between Market and Broad streets, at the corner of Main and Williams. For a map and aerial photograph, plus a list of participating farms, click here.

New Brainerd farmers' market!

2010-06-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

There's good news for folks living in Brainerd - or really anywhere in Chattanooga! Grace Episcopal Church has begun hosting a farmers' market on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; this Saturday marks the the market's third week. Grace is eager to support the people who grow food in and near Chattanooga as well as offering its neighbors a chance to buy food grown in good soil, harvested recently and raised without the many chemicals that can cause health problems. Along with the farmers, some of Grace's food-enthusiasts will have a table at the market offering recipes, food preparation ideas, and other useful information. You can support local farmers and take home healthy food for your family with one visit to Grace's Brainerd Road parking lot. Please visit! (For directions, please click on the link above.)

Participating farmers include:

Tant Hill Farm
Broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and cauliflower.

Owl Hollow Farm
Fresh herbs (spearmint, chocolate mint, and rosemary), snow peas, red and yellow onions, garlic, assorted flowers and plants, and preserves (peach, strawberry, and blackberry). English peas and potatoes will be coming in by the end of June.

Ridgeside Farm
Lettuce, collards, kale, cabbage, and spring onions, blackberries and peaches. We will also have free range eggs.

Walden Farm
Lettuce and salad greens all summer and a few summer vegetables.

Cloud Crest Farm
Grass fed beef and pork.

World Oceans Day

2010-06-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

Did you know that World Oceans Day was this week (June 8)? The day began as a day celebrating the many ways humans are connected to the sea, and with the looming oil disaster in the Gulf, this year it's more important than ever to appreciate and preserve the earth's waters.

You don’t need to live near the beach to be connected to the ocean. Oceans and coasts affect people’s lives every day, around the world. According to The Nature Conservancy, here are five reasons we should care about oceans - not just on World Oceans Day but every day!

The air we breathe. Oceans are a critical player in the basic elements we need to survive. Ocean plants produce half of the world’s oxygen, then these amazing waters absorb nearly one-third of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. Oceans also regulate our weather and form the clouds that bring us fresh water.
The food on your plate. Besides seafood, oceans are connected to what you eat in many more ways. Ocean ingredients, like algae and kelp, are used in making peanut butter beer, soymilk and frozen foods. Plus, 36 percent of the world’s total fisheries catch each year is ground up into fishmeal and oil to feed farmed fish, chickens and pigs.
The items in your medicine cabinet. You’ll find ocean ingredients flowing out of your medicine cabinet in everything from shampoos and cosmetics to medicines that help fight cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, viruses and other diseases.
Jobs and the economy. One in six jobs in the United States is marine-related and more than $128 billion in GDP annually results from ocean tourism, recreation and living resources. Healthy marine habitats like reefs, barrier islands, mangroves and wetlands help protect coastal communities from the results of hurricanes and storm surges.
A shared resource. While many of us enjoy the spectacular recreational activities that oceans offer, for some people oceans are a lifeline for survival. Keeping oceans healthy keeps people healthy, and we each have a personal responsibility to protect our oceans

Show off your photos of the ocean - or any other natural wonder - by entering The Nature Conservancy's fifth-annual photo contest. Details are here, and the winning photograph will be featured in the group's 2012 calendar.

Summer green

2010-06-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

With summer here and kids out of school, the focus of many families turns to entertainment. But having fun can also mean - literally - tons of trash. Here are some ideas for greening up your entertainment, courtsey of The Green Book.

Books
Use the library or buy secondhand books. Consider sharing the ones you have with friends or donating them, rather than throwing them away. About three billion new books are sold each year, requiring 400,000 trees to be chopped down.

DVD's
Rent DVD's instead of buying them. Depending on how much you watch one, you could save money too! The average movie rents for about $4 (and many online movie rental services are even cheaper!), while the average new DVD sells for more than $16. You also won't have to worry about contributing to their trash pile: 100,000 DVD's and CD's are thrown away each month. If you own DVD's that you want to get rid of, donate them to a local library or thrift store, or look for a DVD recycling center.

Tunes
Download tunes to an mp3 player instead of purchasing them at the store. The average price of a CD is $15, whereas an album download is about $10. Each month, more than 45 tons of CD's become obsolete, outdated, or unwanted - and end up in landfills. And when you upgrade your iPod or mp3 player, recycle your old one or return it to the manufacturer. Some companies give customers up to 10 percent off their next purchase when they return their old players. And about 40 percent of the lead in U.S. landfills comes from improperly discarded electronic waste, and the lead in turn pollutes the air and groundwater.

Candy
Buy loose, unwrapped candy from the bin, if you can. Many candy wrappers contain chemicals that make them stain- and water-resistant but also make them difficult to recycle.

Parties
Use electronic invitations (Evite is a great one!) or choose chlorine-free postconsumer recycled paper for your party invitations. (Better use of paper could allow the world's wood consumption to be reduced by 50 percent and possibily as much as 80 percent or more.) For your table, use "real" dishes, silverware, and glasses rather than plastic and paper. Each year, 40 billion plastic utensils are thrown into landfills across the country. You can also save money - using your own stuff is free, whereas the cost of plastic plates, forks, knives and cups for 50 meals could add up to $100.

Drinks on the go
If you have the choice, buy soda from the fountain in a paper cup instead of a can or plastic bottle. You'll reduce the amount of aluminum cans and plastic bottles that are wasted. More paper (48 percent more) is recycled and recovered to make new products than aluminum soda cans (43.9 percent) or plastic bottles (25 percent).

Tickets
Buy your movie and event tickets online or via telephone and print them at home. You'll save time and paper waste. Print-at-home tickets use plain copy paper, which is easier to make into recycled paper than the paperboard used for printed tickets. Some 1.4 billion movie tickets alone are sold in the U.S. annually - and almost every one of them goes in the trash can.

Wanted: A Christian response to the oil spill

2010-05-28T05:41:00.000-07:00

Reprinted with permission from www.joshuacase.net

The other night while watching the show Life I was amazed. There were these ants that would eat these mushrooms and then rush off to die under trees where new mushrooms would sprout from their dead heads. I mean, when it comes to tv, this is serious stuff. So serious in fact, that it seems odd that you could call it anything but natural. I mean lets face it, although it is somewhat mysterious that the ants love to eat the plants which drive them crazy, it really is just a natural cycle of a natural creation. It is life.

What is happening in the Gulf of Mexico this week as a result of BP Chemical’s failure to make good on its promise to protect the wildlife of the world’s oceans while extracting oil to be used for cars is not something to marvel at. Species of fish, pelican, squid, duck, and who knows what else are all being swallowed up into the black gulf of oil which will not only limit their capacity to fly or swim, but will inevitably be the cause of much death. Death that is both unnatural and preventable!

Preventable or not, the disaster is here. The question I have is: where are all the Christians? I mean honestly, here you have an example of humans exacting a kind of injustice on the creation that they claim to be responsible for stewarding, and there has been no effort to try to help or to mobilize (at least from what I can find) people as good stewards to action. And whereas many Christians in the empire were more than ready to suggest that drilling for oil was Biblically justified on a stewardship basis, few are coming forward to take up responsibility for clean up or care.

I have to admit that as I write I am more than a little bummed that if you Google “Christian oil spill volunteers,” you actually find an Atheist organization recruiting volunteers to help with clean up before you find Christians. Now this isn’t to say they are not out there, only to say they are not activating their bases, they’re not stepping in and saying “we love to drive our cars with our fish on them, and so we too are kind of responsible for this mess.” They are not even saying that the oil clean up is part of their responsibility as people of faith in the public square.

But shouldn’t a Christian response to this crisis be equally as measured as a response to other tragedies like hurricanes and earthquakes? Or, in some classic sense, do most Christians still fundamentally believe that God only cares about human life and human surviving? Is there a way in which this oil spill, like the slowness of Christian response to HIV/AIDS in the early years of the pandemic, will be the beginning of breaking of this kind of disconnect? Maybe, but maybe not.

Maybe response really depends on how one views God’s relationship to Creation. If one views God as completely other and distant then it makes sense why caring for the animals about to be destroyed would matter less. And if you buy the Left Behind logic, it matters even less as everything is going burn.

But what if Sallie McFague was right when she suggested thinking about the relationship between the world and God this way: “the world is God’s body?” Would our response be different? Would we be quicker to help if we experienced the violence against the earth as violence against the goodness of God?

McFague’s understanding of the world as God’s body challenges and calls disciples of Jesus to re-imagine the doctrine of creation not merely as God’s acting upon the world, but as God “sharing” divine power with humans that all of creation may flourish. In McFague’s articulation, not only does God meet with humanity in the “intrinsic and intimate” details of their lives, but in the everyday experiences of life at home in planet earth. With this vision of earth as home, McFague hopes to inspire humans to not only be planted as good stewards of the earth (as God’s body) but also to bear witness to the goodness and sustainability of creation in God. (Some might even argue, that it is this way of understanding God/World that allows Christians to challenge the injustices they experience under any political system.)

Might not this view call more Christians to a sharing in clean up? Might not this view make for a kind of green revolution necessary for sustainable life on earth for all that share it?

You may remember that Glenn Beck infuriated Christians all across the US just a few short weeks ago by suggesting that people should report their pastors for using any kind of social justice language in the church. Beck’s point at the time was that these pastors were just buying into a liberal socialist agenda of the Obama administration and that Jesus’ movement had nothing to do with it. Well, on this point, maybe Beck will have nothing to worry about. For it seems to me that the Church is still very much behind the times with regards to creation care. Or, maybe I’m wrong! Let’s give Beck something to talk about and let Rush know that though he may wish to blame ‘the environmentalists’ for this tragedy, its everyone in the empire who is to blame!

I’m convinced that there is a huge need for Christians to wake up and to respond to this crisis as good stewards of a good creation. As people who ought to be working already to participate in the healing of the world, it is our duty! I’ve started rallying my circles and my networks to mobilize people towards action. Won’t you join me?!

Do Justice!
Joshua

Joshua Case is a blogger (http://www.joshuacase.net/), podcaster (http://www.thenickandjoshpodcast.com/), and activist. As a co-facilitator of the Atlanta Emergent cohort, he has blogged and podcasted on matters related to Christianity in the emerging culture for a number of years. Joshua is the chair of the Candler Social Concerns Network and is a third year MDIV student at the Candler School of Theology. He has led a roundtable discussion via podcast about the Christian response to the oil spill, which can be found HERE.

Go outside and play!

2010-05-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

North Chickamauga Greenway, Hixson

Studies show that experiencing nature is an important ingredient for a child's physical, academic, emotional, and spiritual growth. But statistics show that children are six times more likely to play a video game indoors than to ride a bike outside, and older children spend an average of 6.5 hours per day in front of some sort of electronic screen.

Here are some ideas for getting the whole family outside ...

Hiking is a recreational activity that works for the entire family, and Chattanooga is full of great local trails. (Check Hiking Chattanooga for all types of hikes.) Hiking is great exercise, it's free, it can be done almost year-round, and it requires very little equipment. Even young children can participate as long as you start slowly and consider the terrain. Remember the sunscreen and water!
Camping is a great way to spend quality time with your family outdoors, but it does require some extra preparation. Try to avoid long car rides, and find out ahead of time whether the campgrounds are kid-friendly. Help children take part in everything from pitching the tent to making dinner (with close supervision, of course!).
Outdoors at home. Don't neglect the simple pleasures of being together in your own back yard. Chasing fireflies, family sunset-watching, looking for four-leaf clovers, and raking/jumping in leaves are all no-cost family activities that children will remember for a lifetime!
Astronomy. The night-time sky can be magical. Do some research on the Internet or in the library to help define your local night sky, and then lie on your back on a clear night to watch the show God puts on every night. (This is fun for preschoolers, who often enjoy the extra "treat" of getting to stay up a bit later.)

Spending unstructured time outdoors - without the distractions of screens and chores that often take priority inside the home - is a wonderful way to connect with children through meaningful conversations. Since a language-rich family environment is an indicator of school achievement, these ideas for unstructured family time may help you discover ways to improve your family's physical and academic health at the same time!

(Sources: Creative Discovery Museum, U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, and Harvard Education Letter.)

Warner Park recycling center to close temporarily

2010-05-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

from recycleright.org

Due to construction on property adjacent to the Warner Park Recycle Center, the Center will close for approximately one month beginning May 17, 2010. Citizens are encouraged to take their recyclables to one of Chattanooga's other four recycle centers until the project is completed.
Chattanooga convenience center locations:

Access Road at DuPont Parkway, 4500 Access Rd., with the Residential Refuse Collection Center, 37415
John A. Patten Recreation Center, 3202 Kelly's Ferry Rd., 37419
East Brainerd Baseball Complex, end of Batter's Place Road, 37421
Brainerd Recycle Center, 5955 Brainerd Rd., 37411

The convenience centers are open seven days a week, operating under the following schedule:

Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sundays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

In addition to everything that is recyclable through curbside collection - cardboard, newspaper, all paper grades, plastic #1 and #2 bottles with a neck, aluminum and rinsed out steel cans - Chattanooga's recycling convenience centers accept wet and dry cell batteries, small electronics (no TVs or microwaves), shredded paper, glass bottles (brown, green and clear), motor oil, compact fluorescent bulbs and tubular fluorescent bulbs.

Citizens may recycle their computer monitors at Orange Grove's Industrial Training Center, 720 Arlington Avenue in Chattanooga. A $10 fee applies.

Recycling the right way in Chattanooga is easy. Clear guidelines for both curbside recycling and recycling at convenience centers are available at www.recycleright.org. The Web site also offers online subscription for curbside recycling, calendars for curbside collection days and answers to frequently asked questions.

The Warner Park Recycle Center is located at 1250 East Third St., in downtown Chattanooga.

Did you know?

2010-05-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

If you were at the April 21 evening meal at Christ Church, you might have noticed the slideshow going on in the background. If not ... check it out here!

Green Facts

(You may have to manually scroll through each side by clicking on the right arrow.)

Earth Day freebie!

2010-04-22T07:09:00.000-07:00

To celebrate Earth Day, ReusableBags.com is offering its top-selling reusable bag for FREE! The Acme Ultra-Compact Tote is made of 100 percent recycled fabric and plastics (no petroleum). When not in use, the bag folds up into a tiny sack (the sack is built into the seam); when fully opened, the bag holds 25 pounds. The tote also comes with Acme Bags' lifetime guarantee!

There's no minimum purchase required to get the free bag; however, you must pay shipping costs (approx. $5). This special offer expires at midnight tonight (4/22/10), so hurry! When checking out, use offer code EDAYFREE in order to get the discount.

How you can help

2010-04-21T08:10:00.000-07:00

Last year was the first year of Christ Church's Gardening for God, an on-site organic vegetable garden.

Want to get involved in something "green" but don't quite know where to start? The answer is as close as Christ Church! CUMC's Gardening for God ministry needs summer volunteers to help water the garden and harvest the vegetables once they start ripening.

Here's a message from Gardening for God coordinator Emily Dykstra:

I want to thank all of you who signed up to help with the garden this summer. You do not know how much your help will make a difference in so many people's lives.

There are two ways that we need help: One is harvesting; the other is watering. We are more in need of water volunteers than harvesting volunteers, but if you would like to do both, please feel free to do so.

Harvesting is done twice a week -- Wednesday mornings at 10 and Sunday evenings at 7. Harvesting usually takes about 30 minutes and is a great time to fellowship with other church members and see the fruits of our labors. If you decide this is how you want to help, all you have to do is sign up for one of the harvesting days and show up with a bucket and pick ripe vegetables. We have two volunteers who will be delivering the vegetables to people who need them.

If you want to water, all you need to do is sign up for one week this summer and go to the garden twice that week to water. We need volunteers to water from May through September. Only two weeks have been taken for this summer, and they are the weeks of June 6th and June 27th. The sooner you sign up for your week, the better chance you have of getting the week you want.

This Sunday at 2:00 pm (April 25th) we will finish planting the last of the seeds in the garden and will have sign-up sheets for harvesting and watering. At this time I will also do a run through of how to water the garden and show you where the hoses are. If you want to water this summer, please make every effort to attend this meeting. I will also have another watering demonstration next Sunday at 4:00 on May 2nd for those who cannot make it this Sunday.
Hope to see you all Sunday. Earth Week is this week, and WE ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

If you're interested in helping out or just want to learn more, stop by the Gardening for God info table in the atrium at tonight's church dinner, or call Emily at 933-4440. What a great way to celebrate Earth Week - by serving God, meeting new Christian friends, and learning a little about gardening!

Weekend plans??

2010-04-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

Doesn't this look like a gorgeous place to spend a beautiful spring weekend? Well, it's never been easier (or cheaper!) to enjoy such an amazing setting. Come enjoy the Chattanooga Nature Center, which - in honor of Earth Day 2010 - is offering free admission Saturday, April 24, and Sunday, April 25!

For directions to the nature center, click here.

Photo courtsey of Hope Alexander, Chattanooga Nature Center

It's Earth Week!

2010-04-19T06:09:00.000-07:00

Come back each day this week for a new fact, tidbit, or small thing you can do to help the environment - in honor of Earth Week!

Today's goodie comes courtesy of Publix grocery stores - CLICK HERE to receive a coupon good for $1 off a G.E. compact flourescent bulb two-pack and a free reusable grocery bag! (Once the coupon page opens, you'll need to print it.)

Need more incentive to switch to CFL bulbs? Consider these facts: Only 10 percent of the energy used in an incandescent bulb produces light; the rest is given off as heat. And even more staggering - If every American replaced just one light bulb with an Energy Star compact fluorescent bulb, the energy saved could light more than 2.5 million homes for a year.

We at the CUMC Green Team encourage you to try making just one change this week!

Spring plant sale!

2010-04-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

Don't miss the 10th annual Spring Plant Sale at Crabtree Farms this weekend! Chattanooga's downtown organic farm has prepared thousands of healthy, beautiful plants to fill your spring garden, such as Heirloom Tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, sunflowers, blueberry bushes, and lots more! All plants are cultivated in the greenhouse at Crabtree Farms using sustainable methods, which creates healthy, productive plants.

Vendors at the plant sale will also offer hand-crafted foods, vermicomposting bins, body care and crafts for purchase. Other vendors selling plants at the sale include: Sequatchie Cove Farm, Irie Hilltop Gardens and New Harmony Farms.

In addition, each day will feature a different Gardening Talk. Come on Saturday at 11 a.m. for an Organic Gardening Talk and Sunday at 1 p.m. for an Herb Gardening Talk.

Sale hours are as follows:

Saturday April 17, 2010: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Sunday April 18, 2010: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Click below for:
Directions
Plant Sale Information
Crabtree's Plant Sale List

Eco Expo

2010-04-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

Mark your calendars! On Tuesday, April 13, Chattanooga will host its very own EcoExpo. The Expo is Chattanooga’s biggest environmentally friendly expo and showcases practical solutions to learn green and live green. You can visit local businesses and industries that are working hard to minimize their environmental impact, and also learn how to make your home and lifestyle more ecologically friendly. You’ll even discover ways to save money by going green!

The Expo runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Chattanooga Trade & Convention Center.

What will they think of next?

2010-03-25T10:29:00.000-07:00

A friend posted this on facebook, saying it was an easy way to keep her 4-year-old entertained on a rainy day. I think this takes recycling to a new level ... and a fun one!

http://www.netflixorigami.com/

Yes, it's NetFlix origami ... The website claims that NetFlix tear-off flaps are perfect for origami and paper airplanes because they're sturdy and colorful. And although most origami requires special paper squares, they have adapted their designs for use with unaltered NetFlix flaps. Just tear them off carefully at the perforated line and follow our step-by-step instructions for making paper-folding magic.

Check out the website - it's amazing what they can make out of these little mailers!

March green tips

2010-03-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

Green Team member Jennifer Hobbs is currently reading the book Eco-Friendly Families, by Helen Coronato. The book is full of tips we can all implement each month - things that add up to big changes over the course of a year. We're sharing these with our readers each month as well!

Motivate kids to become part of your home's housework solution by letting them make their own cleaning solution. Making your own cleaner is much safer for your family's health. Start by mixing 1/4 cup vinegar, one tablespoon baking soda, and one gallon of water. Put in individual spray bottles and let your children start cleaning.
Put your playroom back in order after the long winter months by using disposable wipes containers, yogurt cups, and oatmeal boxes for storage. Over-the-door shoe holders keeps arts and crafts pieces organized and within reach. (Plus, if you know where things are, then you need to buy them less often.) You can also rub out minor marks on the walls with a damp washcloth dipped in baking soda.
Start seedlings to plant in your garden. After a breakfast of eggs, rinse and air-dry the shells. Pinprick two or three holes in each shell, resetting them in a cardboard container. Lightly fill shells with soil and one or two seeds. Keep seedlings moist and warm until ready to transport outside. When planting, crush shells so roots can grow freely, but leave them there as nutrients for the soil. Check with your local nursery to find out when the best time to plant is.
If crayon drawings are ruining your floors, remove stains by placing a dollop of toothpaste over the area. Using a sock that has lost its mate, rub the area. Scratches on wood floors can be treated with equal parts lemon juice and olive oil. This solution also makes a great furniture polish!

Cookware goes green

2010-03-09T20:15:00.000-08:00

Add a few pieces of eco-friendly cookware made from materials found in nature - such as cast iron, glass, and bamboo - to the pot and pan collection in your cupboard. Some products may even add more to your cooking than just the ability to perfectly sear a chicken breast: Cast iron pans add dietary iron, making them an ideal choice for both the environment and your heath.

Cast iron. Grandma had at least one cast iron skillet; she knew it would last forever. And, contrary to the popular belief, food won't stick to the material - just don't scrub it or let it rust. Manufacturing cast iron cookware since 1896, the Lodge company (located just down the road in South Pittsburg, TN) makes skillets and Dutch ovens of every size, including specialty pieces that are just as decorative as they are functional.
Glass. Glass is made from readily available sand - there's no environmental shortage. Tempered glass (heat-treated to increase strength) baking dishes, such as those by Pyrex, cook evenly and can easily go from oven to refrigerator (let it cool first). Bonus: Many styles come with storage lids and are easy to clean.
Bamboo. Bamboo is a truly renewable, sustainable material. It's a reed, not a tree, so when it's cut, it regrows from the tubers. You can't cook in the material, but it makes for aesthetically pleasing serving pieces. Plus, bamboo utensils won't scratch your pans. See http://www.bambu.greenfeet.com/ for more information and retail locations.

from Clean Eating magazine, March/April 2010 issue

A 90-minute world tour!

2010-03-03T18:22:00.000-08:00

Bring the entire family to learn about animals all over the world!

On April 3, award-winning author Marty Essen will present his high-energy digital slide show, Around the World in 90 Minutes. This event is presented by the Chattanooga Nature Center (CNC), Reflection Riding Arboretum and Botanical Garden (RR), Tennessee Aquarium, UTC and Lookout Mountain Conservancy.

“This will be a great opportunity to learn more about the incredible diversity of life around the world from someone who has seen so much.” said Dr. Jean Lomino, CNC executive director. “We hope participants will leave with a greater desire to protect our planet.”

Marty’s show features interesting facts, humorous stories, and the best of thousands of photos he took while traveling the world for his book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. It's the type of show where the audience has fun laughing at the stories, oohing and aahing at the photos, and then, when it's all done, they realize just how much they've learned. Around the World in 90 Minutes is great for wildlife lovers from 7 to 107!

Highlights of the show include:

Amazing animal facts
Debunking animal myths
Cuddly wallaroos and spiny walking sticks
Charging elephants and howling wolves
Deadly snakes and friendly penguins
Bizarre creatures and endangered species
Swimming with pirranhas
Kayaking in the rainforest
Hiking with the Porcupine caribou migration
Rafting with humpback whales
Surviving a hippo attack in Zimbabwe

“Marty’s presentation is the kick-off for the 2010 BioBlitz, and it is intended to bring more attention to this significant undertaking,” Lomino said. The Chattanooga BioBlitz brings together scientists and experts from across the region in a race against time to see how many species can be counted during a 24-hour biological survey of CNC and RR properties. Chattanooga BioBlitz combines the best of a festival, educational event, scientific endeavor, and contest into a unique event which is set for 3 p.m. April 30 and continuing through 3 p.m. May 1.

Around the World in 90 Minutes will take place at Benwood Auditorium on the UTC Campus, Saturday, April 3 at 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. (Benwood Auditorium is located inside the Engineering, Math, and Computer Science building, at the corner of Vine and Palmetto streets. Click here for a map of the campus.) Cost is $5 for adults, $2.50 for children ages 4 to 11 and 3 and under are free. Attendees can pay at the door or reserve seating by calling 821-1160, ext. 0.

Books and photographs will be available for purchase.

February green tips

2010-02-24T08:32:00.000-08:00

Green Team member Jennifer Hobbs is currently reading the book Eco-Friendly Families, by Helen Coronato. The book shares short tips we can all implement each month - things that add up to big changes over the course of a year. We're sharing these with our readers each month as well!

For February:

If you have club soda that has gone flat, give it to your houseplants! Plants benefit from club soda's minerals, regardless of the carbonation. Instead of pouring it down the drain, share it with a leafy friend.
Make your own natural air freshener by adding a cotton ball dipped in essential oil to your vacuum bag.
For mopping, steep a cup of peppermint tea and squeeze in half a lemon. Combine with one cup of distilled white vinegar and swish in bucket. Once cool, mop floors clean. Vinegar is a disinfectant, the peppermint tea has antibacterial elements and helps remove scratch marks, and the lemon will act as a room freshener!

Green Disney - part 2

2010-02-16T18:10:00.000-08:00

While walking the short trail to the Conservation Station area of Disney's Animal Kingdom, we were happy to notice handy tips for making backyard habitats - a perfect reminder that we can all make a small difference, no matter where we are!

So here, in pictures, are Disney's tips for making your yard a little greener!

Green Disney - part 1

2010-02-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

"Landscapes of great wonder and beauty lie under our feet and all around us. They are discovered in tunnels in the ground, the heart of flowers, the hollows of trees, fresh-water ponds, seaweed jungles between tides, and even drops of water. Life in these hidden worlds is more startling in reality than anything we can imagine. How could this earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures?”

—Walt Disney (1901-1966)

While on our recent Disney trip, I was surprised to see several "green" initiatives being put into practice. Biodegradable cardboard straws are used instead of plastic, at least in some areas of the parks and resorts, and in-room recycling is encouraged. We found this in our hotel room on the first day:

I loved that guests were encouraged to save their plastic bottles, alumimum cans, and newspapers, and that housekeeping staff follows through with the recycling (I asked Barb, our room attendant, about this). Many of the park's garbage containers had separate disposal areas for plastic as well. Parks like Animal Kingdom and resorts like Animal Kingdom Lodge provide natural habitats for about hundreds of species, many endangered, while also educating millions of visitors. (Just last month, the AKL welcomed two Ruppell's Griffon Vulture hatchlings, the first of this threatened species bred at the Florida park.) And the trains in Disneyland now run on biodiesel fuel that starts as cooking oil in the park's restaurants and hotels.

Corporately speaking, Mickey has gone green. The Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund distributes money to nonprofit organizations worldwide that help wildlife and wild places. The popular fairy Tinkerbell is now a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy's "Kids Saving Energy" program. And Disney has partnered with The Nature Conservancy to create the Disney Wilderness Preserve. This 12,000-acre area offers a model of ecological restoration and is one of the largest off-site wetlands mitigation projects ever undertaken in the United States.

But Disney is quick to point out that you don't have to be a gazillion-dollar corporation to make a difference; throughout Animal Kingdom, guests get small tips here and there, all of which add up to helping preserve our planet. Next time, we'll take a look at some of these!

Pardon the interruption ...

2010-02-08T18:27:00.000-08:00

- a personal note from LeeAnne, the Green Team member primarily responsible for all things bloggy ...

I apologize for the lack of posts the past week or so - I've been out of town on a winter vacation. I intended to put a couple of things in the blog queue, so to speak, and set them to publish automatically, but with last weekend's snow and the chaos that ensued right before we left, I just forgot all about it. So sorry!

So last week, my family and I were at Disney World! It was a belated birthday trip for our daughter, who turned five in October, and we had a truly terrific time. But as someone who's really "into" the green way of life, I'm usually pretty bothered when visiting theme parks of any sort. I tend to focus on all the consumption and accompanying waste that occurs at places like this - the overpriced food and souvenirs, the mountains of trash, the pollution-yielding cars that pour into the parking lots ... it really gets to me if I let it. So I was worried about not enjoying Disney as much as I might otherwise.

I'm happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised! I found Disney to be pretty environmentally conscious. Maybe it was where we stayed (the amazing Animal Kingdom Lodge, where there's probably more focus on conservation than at other resorts), or maybe I was just caught up in the "magic" Disney likes to trumpet, but I took note of several green initiatives, and these led to more enjoyment on my part. Is Disney perfect? Certainly not. Is there still waste, consumption, and room for improvement? Yes, yes, and yes! But overall, I was really happy with what I saw. Throughout this upcoming week, I'm going to share some of these things here with our blog readers. I hope you enjoy them - stay tuned for more!

Book review - "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"

2010-01-27T18:56:00.000-08:00

This is the first in what we hope will become a frequent topic here on the CUMC Green Team blog - book reviews that deal with green topics. In this first review, Green Team member Keely Farris reviews Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

________________

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

The New Oxford American Dictionary chose locavore, a person who seeks out locally produced food, as its word of the year in 2007. When I began this book I had just started to become aware of these locavores, people who eat food grown or produced locally or within a limited radius. The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to produce their own food, with some arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locally grown food is an environmentally friendly means of obtaining food, since supermarkets that import their food use more fossil fuels and non-renewable resources.

The local foods movement is gaining momentum as many people prefer the taste and more environmentally sound effects of foods that are fresh, seasonal, and grown close to home. Some locavores draw inspiration from the The 100-Mile Diet or from advocates of local eating like Barbara Kingsolver, whose book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle chronicles her family's attempts to eat locally. Others just follow their taste buds to farmers' markets, community supported agriculture programs, and community gardens.

But you don't have to be a locavore to appreciate Kingsolver's memior. It is moving, informative, sincere - an honest potrait of a family who moved back to Southern Appalachia from Phoenix and committed to a one-year challenge of eating only what they could grow (they were "allowed" to buy only things that were produced within 100 miles of their home). Kingsolver takes readers through the seasons, sharing the joys and challenges of eating only foods that she, her husband, and two daughters grow in their backyard or purchase from neighboring farms. Part memoir, part cookbook, and part exposé of the American food industry, AVM is one family's inspiring story of discovering the truth behind the adage "you are what you eat" and a valuable resource for anyone looking to do the same.

While reading this memoir, written by such a gifted novelist as Kingsolver, it felt as if I were doing more than reading. It was more like drinking the words in, being invigorated by this descriptive story of the impact one family can make on this big world. Truly, I did not want this book to end. I enjoyed so much that I not only own a copy of it, I bought the audiobook too. It took me to mountains and Southern communities I remember as child, a landscape that is ever-changing and disappearing. Reading it was more of a treasured experience for me personally than just a pleasureable read.

Kingsolver allows you an intimate window into her family's year-long journey. It would be hard not to admire them and their committment as you follow them through the pages of the book. The Kingsolver-Hopp's are charming, funny, poetic, and informative all at the same time. This family is full concern for the farming community, and the book captures the pulse of a life that is dissolving like the misty haze that gives the Smoky Mountains their name. This one of my top picks and I suggest it to everyone who enjoys reading.

- Keely Farris

________________

If you have suggestions for other books you'd like to see reviewed here, please leave a comment in the "comments" section following this post. We'll do our best to accommodate you as soon as we can!

Green trivia

2010-01-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

Did you know?

The well-known recycling symbol you see above was a college student's winning contest entry in 1970, the same year as the first Earth Day. Stay tuned for more exciting news about some Earth Day activities we're planning at Christ Church!

Monthly Green

2010-01-19T19:04:00.000-08:00

Green Team member Jennifer Hobbs is currently reading the book Eco-Friendly Families, by Helen Coronato. One of the things the book shares is short tips you can implement each month that add up to big changes over the course of a year. We'll try to share these with you each month as well!
For January:

Have a Family Game Night where all electronics are turned off and only necessary lighting is used. Play fun games such as board games or card games. Have playing cards that need to be cleaned? Put them in a brown paper bag with 1 tablespoon of baby powder and shake vigorously. Remove cards and wipe down with a damp rag.
Save energy by using old tights or men's tube socks by filling them with rice or beans and tying off the end. Children can even make creatures out of them by adding googly eyes and leftover craft supplies. Assign a child the role of making sure they are placed in window sills or at the bottom of drafty doors.
Be sure to clean your humidifier with baking soda between uses to extend the life of your purchase.
Houseplants are natural air purifiers, use no energy, and make an especially welcome health asset when homes are locked up tight during winter months. It is suggested that you have one plant for every 100 to 150 square feet of living space. These top five choices said to help remove carbon monoxide, trichloroethylene, benzene, and formaldehyde: spider plants, English ivy, mums, peace lily, and bamboo palm.

Green in 2010

2010-01-11T20:29:00.000-08:00

The Sierra Club recently published several tips for making 2010 a greener year. I thought it was interesting how simple changes can make a big impact.

Tip #1: Drive Less

If your pledge is to walk or bike more and drive less, you’ll relieve the environment of harmful greenhouse gases as well as reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Added bonus: This will nicely complement an exercise or diet resolution.

Yearly Impact: Reducing your driving distance by just 15 miles per week will save 900 pounds of carbon emissions annually.

Tip #2: Eat Fewer Animals

The environmental vegetarianism movement grows by the day, assisted in part by the recent assertion by the Worldwatch Institute that livestock production is to blame for more than half of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. If people resolved to cut back on meat and dairy in 2010, the world would be a much cleaner place.

Yearly Impact: If you refrain from eating meat just one day a week, you'll save as many emissions as you would driving 1,000 fewer miles this year.

Tip #3: Commit to Composting

We hear people preach about recycling all the time. But did you know that composting may be as important? As food and other organic waste decomposes anaerobically in the landfill, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas that's more than 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Because composting is an aerobic process, it only produces carbon dioxide and not methane. Not sure how to get started? Click here and here to find out.

Yearly Impact: If the average family composted regularly, that household would prevent about 30 pounds of methane emissions per year, the equivalent of around 620 pounds of carbon dioxide (the same as what a small diesel car driving 1,200 miles would emit).
Tip #4: Give Your Time

Heed President Obama's call to service by signing up to help an organization that works to improve the world by protecting and preserving the environment.

Yearly Impact: Immeasurable.

The Green Book

2010-01-04T18:47:00.000-08:00

Kohl's has The Green Book on sale right now for $5 as part of its "Kohls Cares for Kids" promotion -- all proceeds from the book sale go to health, education, and recreational opportunities for children (Chattanooga's own T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital is one of the 2009-2010 partner hospitals). The book is a great collection of simple things we can all do to reduce waste and conserve energy. It also includes green-living anecdotes from celebrities like Faith Hill, Justin Timberlake, Robert Redford, and Martha Stewart.

Kohl's has also taken steps to become greener - both corporately and within each individual store. For more information, go to http://www.kohlsgreenscene.com/.

How green was this decade?

2009-12-29T06:56:00.000-08:00

The Sierra Club has put out a fun quiz to test your knowledge of the past decade, and the effects "green" living have had on it. If you'd like to take the quiz, go here ... and stop scrolling - the answers are listed below.

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compiled from www.sierraclub.org

1.The Hummer's demise signaled an end to an era of the gas-guzzling vehicle. Between 2007 and 2008, Hummer sales dropped by just over 50 percent. Sales plummeted 50.9 percent between 2007 and 2008. Sources: NYT and Autobloggreen.

2.In 2001, a Gallup poll found that 30 percent of Americans thought the seriousness of global warming was "exaggerated." In March 2009, that percentage had since increased. In March 2009, 41 percent of Americans thought the seriousness of global warming was exaggerated. Sources: Gallup.

3. In 2009, Gore's audiobook An Inconvenient Truth won a Grammy for best spoken word album, but it was read by Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon, and Blair Underwood. In 2006, Gore won an Oscar. In 2007, his network Current TV won a primetime Emmy. That same year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

4. Congaree was established as a national park in 2003. Black Canyon of the Gunnison was established in 1999. Biscayne was 1980. And Saguaro was 1994. Other parks established in the 2000s include Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio and Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado.

5.Which of these species definitely did not become extinct during the past decade? The Tooth Cave Pseudoscorpion. Click here for a gallery of ten species that became extinct during the 2000s. The Tooth Cave Pseudoscorpion is not extinct, but it has been on the U.S. endangered species list since 1988 due to habitat loss and urban development.

6.Who said "We're spending money on clean coal technology. Do you realize we've got 250 million years of coal?" Former president George W. Bush made the remark on June 8, 2005. Estimations on total coal energy supply vary, but even the most overly optimistic numbers aren't more than a few hundred years.

7.According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of just over 11.2 percent per decade, relative to the 1979 to 2000 average. Here is the graph.

8.The 2000 Olympics were in Australia. In 2004, they were in Greece. In 2008, they took place in China. Of the three countries, Australia has the worst greenhouse-gas emissions per capita. The Aussies are near the top of the world's list in greenhouse-gas emissions per capita. Greece also has a relatively high per capita emissions rate. China's rate is one of the lowest. But China, thanks to its increasing use of coal-powered energy, is now believed to top the list for total greenhouse gas emissions.

9.In 2009, the rate of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest was much lower than in 2000. In 2009, Brazil reported rainforest deforestation at under 10,000 square kilometers. In 2000, Brazil reported that figure at just under 20,000 square kilometers. According to Mongabay.com, "The reduction in Amazon deforestation comes a year after Brazil announced an ambitious plan to reduce forest loss by 70 percent by 2018 as part of its climate policy. Deforestation accounts for more than three-fifths of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 20 percent of emissions worldwide. Brazil is seeking billions of dollars from industrialized nations for its efforts to reduce deforestation."

10.In July 2000, gas prices were roughly $1.50 a gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration. In November 2009, the national average was about $2.66 a gallon. Prices peaked above the $4 mark in July 2008.

For more green fun, check out other "How Green is my ..." quizzes at http://www.sierraclub.org/howgreen/

Recycling reminder

2009-12-21T20:26:00.000-08:00

Christmas is Friday, and with its arrival - or departure, depending on how you look at it - comes lots of additional waste. Tons, in fact ... literally tons. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, household waste increases by more than 25 percent, and trash created annually from gift wrap and shopping bags is about 4 million tons.

Here are more staggering statistics, courtesy of Saturday's Chattanooga Times-Free Press:

If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet.
If every American family wrapped just three presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.
The 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high.
If every person sent one less card, approximately 19 million pounds of paper would be saved - the equivalent of 160,000 trees.

So what can one family do about all this? The answer is simple: Recycle! Many of the things you'd throw away while cleaning up the Christmas morning mess can actually be recycled, including gift wrap (no metallic papers or bows), paper shopping bags, toy boxes, cardboard mailing boxes, cards, and envelopes.

City residents enjoy biweekly curbside recycling pickup; others can drop items off at one of Chattanooga's many recycling convenience centers. Click here for convenience center locations. Anyone can drop off their recyclables at these locations - you do not need to be a resident of Chattanooga ... or even Hamilton County! To take advantage of curbside pickup, you must be enrolled in the local recycling program. Click here to sign up, or here to check your area's recycling schedule (only enrolled homes will appear in database).

Guidelines for both curbside recycling and recycling at convenience centers are available at http://recycleright.org/. The web site also includes information about the Orange Grove Center's involvement, answers to frequently asked questions, a printable “Rocky the Recycling Raccoon” coloring page and more.

And yes, for those of you who were wondering about the photo at the top of this post, that is my post-Christmas recycling pile - tree and all - from last year. Scary, huh?

Save trees - send eCards!

2009-12-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

Fretting because you haven't started your Christmas cards yet? Feeling frazzled at all you must do between now and Christmas? Let The Nature Conservancy take one thing off your to-do list: Send one of their beautiful nature-themed eCards! The free cards feature amazing nature photography taken by "ordinary" TNC members.

Here are two examples of the stunning photography ...

Banff, Alberta Canada

Pleneau Bay, Antarctic Peninsula.

Sending eCards is one small step toward protecting beautiful places like these. So do something different this year - save a stamp, save a tree, and send eCards!

Save money with LED lights

2009-12-15T19:33:00.000-08:00

One quick and easy change that will save you money this Christmas - and many Christmas seasons to come - is to change your standard twinkle lights to light-emitting diode (LED) lights. LED's use 75 to 90 percent less electricity than standard incandescents, and they're 90% more efficient than their tungsten counterparts. They’re perfect for strings of holiday lights, because they don’t get hot so if you have an artifical tree it won't off gas as much and if you have a live tree it is less hazardous. And most LEDs last 100,000 hours. They’re made with less nasty chemicals and come in all kinds of festive colors and shapes. They are now easy to find at hardware stores and most big box department stores.

Need more convincing? The U.S. Department of Energy recently posted this cost savings analysis on its blog:

Although the initial purchase price of LED light strings might higher, consider the cost of running each type of light string for 12 hours per day for 40 days:

Type of Light
Electricity Cost *

Standard C-7 (125 bulbs, 4 watts each)

$25.13

Mini incandescent lights (300 bulbs, 0.4 watts each)

$6.03

LED holiday lights (280 bulbs, 0.04 watts each)

$0.56

*Assumes an electricity price of 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour (Annual Energy Outlook 2008 Residential Average).

Learn more about the advantages of LED holiday lights on EnergySavers.gov, and visit the ENERGY STAR® site to find manufacturers and brands.

Heather Levin, author of The Greenest Dollar blog, did her own testing to prove the cost savings. "The LED lights I bought were $9, and there were 60 lights on the string," she said via her blog. "I tested them last night using my Kill A Watt and had an amazing discovery. After being left on for 12 hours, they only used .02 kilowatts of electricity. This means that, for this strand, it would take 25 days to use 1 kw of electricity. And, that’s if they were left on 24 hours a day."

What can you do with your old lights once you have converted to LEDs lights. Well, if you're really crafty, you can us them instead of ribbon when wrapping presents, but a more practical solution is to recycle them. Recycling lights is a more responsible option than sending them to Goodwill, enabling someone else to burn up the ozone. Light manufacturer Holiday LEDS is offering a recycling program - people who send in their old lights before Jan. 31, 2010, will have a chance to receive a free set of LED lights or a 10 percent discount coupon on future purchases. For more information, including recycling contest rules, visit http://www.holidayleds.com/ for the scoop.

A natural holiday

2009-12-09T06:24:00.000-08:00

We'll be posting more "green holiday" tips later this week, but I wanted to share some natural decorating ideas, courtesy of the Chattanooga Nature Center. My family attended its annual "Holiday in the Woods" celebration this past weekend, and I was struck by the unique ways they turned everyday items into holiday decor.

Look twice at this wreath - it's actually a common garden hose!

Coca-Cola cans inspired this outdoor tree.

When decorating, don't forget your feathered friends! The Nature Center's outdoor trees were all adorned with wildlife-friendly "ornaments."

Orange skins doubled as bird-feeders on this tree.

Children were invited to make these birdseed ornaments - simply cover a pinecone in peanut butter, then roll in birdseed. It was messy, but the kids loved it!

I'm sure this little guy will enjoy all the natural treats!

We even saw a deer as we left!

If you've never been to the Chattanooga Nature Center, I highly recommend it! It's an inexpensive way to enjoy the great outdoors and teach children - and adults - more about wildlife conservation.

Christ Church Green Team - Who Are We?

2009-11-30T19:04:00.000-08:00

The Christ Church Green Team began this fall with the goal of practicing environmental stewardship—and encouraging other Christians to do the same. Here’s a look at our members and the different things that are important to us in our various journeys toward greener living:

_____________________________________________________

Keely Farris

Keely’s road to green began in a seventh-grade science class when a substitute teacher explained how long it took Styrofoam to decompose. Years later, she read Green Baby, Sage Mom and says it changed her life. She now avidly supports organic products and volunteers as a Green Cleaning Parties host, helping people who want to make their own green cleaning products. Keely’s first step to being green started with buying organic baby food, followed by buying cleaning products at health food stores and our local green grocery. Her family began recycling, and now she makes own cleaning products. She and her husband Heath have two children: Ian, 4, and Lilah, 2.

_____________________________________________________

Jennifer Hobbs

Jennifer’s family really started thinking green earlier this year when she and her sister decorated a "green" table for the CUMC Mad Hatter's Tea—everything on the table could be recycled or was recycled. This caused her to think about all stuff we waste and throw away: Did it have another purpose? Her family now recycles and tries to consume less. She uses only homemade cleaners and makes her own body wash; she says her son, who is prone to chronic sinus infections and nosebleeds, has been more healthy since she stopped using harsh cleaners at home. Jennifer’s next goal is to start composting. She is married to Jason Hobbs, and they have two children: Noah, 6, and Sarah, 3.

_____________________________________________________

Julene Simmons

Julene’s passion is recycling and trying to keep items out of landfills. She says her sons love to help with recycling and are always proud to help someone else out by giving away items we don't need on Freecycle. (And Julene’s friends are always amazed at the freebies she finds through Freecycle!) She believes it’s important to know that even as “just” one family, she—and all of us—can make a difference! Julene is also active in the Christ Church music ministry. She and her husband Ben have two sons: Alex, 4, and Paxton, 3.

_____________________________________________________

Cathy Turner

Dr. Cathy Robbs Turner is the Christ United Methodist Church Director of Education and serves as the God is Green coordinator. Cathy considers herself "light green" when it comes to the eco movement and is eagerly learning and growing as an environmental steward. She believes that the world God created has been entrusted to us. We show respect for our Creator by our care for creation. Her e-stewardship journey has begun with an effort to go paperless by paying bills online, forgo plastic water bottles, and recycle paper.

_____________________________________________________

LeeAnne Viall

LeeAnne became a reluctant recycler about 10 years ago when her mother guilted her into it, but she's since become a bit obsessed about the issue. She and her family now recycle everything, even swapping with out-of-state family to ensure items not accepted in Chattanooga still get recycled. She has also switched to compact fluorescent light bulbs and all-natural cleaning products, tries to purchase organic, locally grown food as much as possible, and has bought reusable shopping bags (and quickly learned that the bags only help when you actually remember to take them inside the store ...). LeeAnne believes that Christians have a unique responsibility to care for the earth God created and is thrilled to have found other folks at Christ Church who feel the same way. Her next goal is to eliminate two things from her life: plastic bags and heavily processed foods. She is married to Bobby Viall, and they have one daughter: Maggie, 5.

Green Thanksgiving

2009-11-23T15:10:00.000-08:00

Did you know? Americans produce 25 million extra tons of garbage between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.

If you're hosting - or just attending - a big Thanksgiving dinner this year, you're probably already thinking about the meal preparations and Black Friday sales. But every year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, Americans generate 25 million extra tons of garbage. As you kick off this busy season, why not get started on a more eco-friendly holiday by making your Thanksgiving a little greener? Here are eight great ideas, courtesy of earth911 and ABC affiliate KIVI-TV in Boise, Idaho, to get you started:

Shopping for Food
When shopping for your Thanksgiving meal, keep two words in mind: organic and local. These keywords will guarantee a fresher, more nutritious meal. If you buy local, not only can you enjoy fresh food, but you will also support your local economy. Check for farmers’ markets, family farms, community-supported agriculture programs and U-Pick options in your area for the freshest produce, eggs, dairy and grass-fed meat. Also, consider buying organic wines to be more eco-conscious without sacrificing quality or taste. If you’re going to have a large crowd, buy food in bulk to reduce packaging waste and save money. And of course, bring your own reusable shopping bags to the grocery store.

Crowd Control
At least 28 billion pounds of edible food is wasted each year – more than 100 pounds per person. One of the best ways to reduce your waste this Thanksgiving is to plan ahead for the meal and practicing portion control. Use Less Stuff has created a list of approximate per-person food and drink portions:

-Turkey- 1 pound
-Stuffing- ¼ pound
-Sweet potato casserole- ¼ pound
-Green beans- ¼ pound
-Cranberry relish- 3 tablespoons
-Pumpkin pie- 1/8 of a 9 inch pie

After the meal, evaluate how many people were present and how much of each dish was consumed. By keeping track each year, you can make a more efficient, less wasteful Thanksgiving meal in the future.

Playtime Isn't Just for Kids
Instead of planting yourself in front of the TV for the day, consider getting some fresh air or playing a board game. Take advantage of the time together with friends and family while decreasing your energy usage. Try bundling up and playing some football outside instead of watching it. Split the whole family into teams and get everyone involved. Make sure the winners get to go through the dessert line first!

Traveling Tips
According to Use Less Stuff, if each family reduced holiday gasoline consumption by 1 gallon (about 20 miles), we would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million tons. Invite nearby friends and family and neighbors to your house for Thanksgiving dinner and encourage them to do the same. If you must go over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving, turn down the thermostat and turn off the lights to save energy while you’re gone.

Setting the Table
There are many options when it comes to table settings. If you're having a small gathering, get out your nice china for the occasion and use cloth napkins. If you’re expecting a big crowd, organize it like a potluck and ask your guests to bring dishes and silverware for themselves. If disposable place settings are your only choice, opt for biodegradable and compostable utensils, napkins and plates, such as those from Biodegradable Store.com.
The average dishwasher uses between 7 and 15 gallons of water per cycle, so be sure to fill the dishwasher to capacity before running it to save water and energy.

Crafty Decorations (Yes, You Can Do It!)
Add some handcrafted elegance to your table with homemade decorations. Most materials can be found in your craft cupboard or backyard. Have the kids chip in with a pre-Thanksgiving craft day. Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:
-Acorn napkin ties
-Dried leaf place cards
-Corn or leaf print place mats
-Pinecone turkeys
-Painted gourds
-Festive fall arrangements of pumpkins or corn cobs
-Make your own cornucopia
If there is a tablecloth or other decorative item you’ve been eying, make sure it’s a purchase you’ll be happy to reuse in the future. Some decorations can even become new family traditions.

Lose the Leftovers
Once the party is over, it’s time to decide what to do with all that leftover food. Don’t forget to donate your leftovers to a food bank or nearby homeless shelter. And remember to compost your food scraps. If you bought Thanksgiving supplies in bulk, the containers from your various products are perfect for storing large quantities of leftovers. Make sure your guests leave with a portion of extra food to take home. After all, one of the best Thanksgiving traditions is noshing on leftover turkey sandwiches and mashed potatoes for lunch the following weekend.

Recycling Isn’t a Chore
Get back to the basics and recycle. Provide clearly marked recycling containers for paper, plastic, and glass, and make sure your guests know not to throw these items in the garbage can. Recycling all packaging, as well as any beverage containers, will significantly reduce the number of times you have to take the trash out, as well as the amount of garbage you send to the landfill.
A Family Affair
Thanksgiving is a great time to invite the rest of your family to "go green" for the Christmas season. Not everyone needs to be on board, but you might be surprised at the small steps your loved ones are willing to take. Remember: We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children!

These shoes were made for ... recycling?

2009-11-20T05:32:00.001-08:00

Photo courtesy of Nikereuseashoe.com

Just last year, Americans discarded more than 300 million pairs of shoes. When these shoes break down in our landfills, the toxic glue that holds the shoes together can leak into our water supply and atmosphere. Old athletic shoes might not be at the top of your recycling list, but did you know that even these can be recycled? The rubber soles of 75,000 pairs of sneakers can create an entire running track, and the foam from the same shoes can be turned into the springy surface of three tennis courts! While it might be harder to find places to recycle your shoes, it's worth it to keep millions of pairs out of our landfills.

Worn-out athletic shoes - of any brand - can be turned in at a Nike store or another Nike collection site. (The closest collection site is at the Nike Factory Store in Calhoun, Ga.) Nike's Reuse-a-Shoe program recycles the rubber, foam, and fabric from more than 24 million pairs of shoes. This recycled material is turned into various types of surfacing, including tennis courts, tracks, athletic fields, and children's playgrounds.

If you're getting rid of wearable shoes that have just gone out of style, you have more options. Local thrift stores will often re-sell the shoes, raising money for their charities AND keeping the shoes out of the landfill. In addition, Shoes 4 Orphan Souls (http://www.soles4soles.org/) cleans up unwanted shoes and ships them to needy people around the world. The group facilitates donations from organizations and individuals and has distributed more than 4 million pairs of shoes to people in 125 different countries.

Most of our closets are full of shoes we rarely wear. The next time you decide to clean these out, think twice before you throw them away! We can change the world, one pair at a time!

Green Mattress deal

2009-11-16T20:13:00.000-08:00

The Green Mattress Company at Hamilton Place is offering $100 off any latex or EcoMemory mattress! To take advantage of this deal, CLICK HERE and then select the Green Mattress Co. box. You will be directed to a printable coupon, which you can redeem at the store.

This offer is valid through 12/31/09.

Holiday tips

2009-11-10T08:02:00.000-08:00

With the Christmas season fast approaching, we at the CUMC Green Team thought we'd share some of our favorite ideas for a greener holiday. Between now and New Year's Day, we'll post easy hints for making your holiday fun AND eco-friendly! And if you have any extra tips, please share them in the "comments" field (click on the "Comments" button at the end of this post).

Green holiday hints

Recycle!! This is probably one of the simplest things we can all do - at Christmas and year-round. Between the advertising flyers, wrapping paper, toy packaging, and added grocery shopping, Christmas generates a lot of waste! You can recycle wrapping paper, tin cans, boxes (both "regular" paper, toy packaging, cereal-type boxes, and corregated cardboard), even those glass wine bottles! (If you live in the Chattanooga city limits, all of these items except glass can be collected via curbside pickup. If you live outside the city limits, all - including glass - can be dropped off at one of Chattanooga's many recycling centers. CLICK HERE for curbside pickup schedule/guidelines and drop-off locations.)

Consider gifts that are friendly to the environment. Charitable donations are a great option for the person who has everything - and they produce virtually no trash and no harmful production process. If you want to give something more tangible, why not make or purchase a handmade gift? Etsy.com is an online marketplace where crafters sell their own wares. Gift certificates or memberships to local attractions make great gifts as well. (When my brother-in-law's children were young, my husband and I gave them a much-needed evening out: a restaurant gift card, tickets to the movies, and a coupon for free babysitting. And since having my own daughter, I've received gift memberships to the Creative Discovery Museum, Tennessee Aquarium, and Chattanooga Nature Center. I can promise you that parents with young children would love a free date night, a gift that continues "giving" year-round, or things that don't take up a lot of space in their homes!)

Decorate naturally. Decorate with fresh greenery rather than plastic. Trim branches from that holly bush out front, gather pine cones with the kids, fill a bowl with red and green apples, or replant your live Christmas tree when the holidays are over. (Young Life is selling live wreaths and garlands to raise money for its ministry.) Be creative! And share with us here what you come up with!

Take a time out. If you decorate with outdoor lights, do you leave them on all night? Consider buying a weather-friendly timer for your outdoor decorations. These timers can be set to come on at dusk and to turn themselves off at the time you designate.

Be sure to check back often for more great tips! And don't forget to share your own hints with us too!

Seeing green at the movies

2009-11-06T06:52:00.000-08:00

No, it's not a new kind of techno-color! Chattanooga's Majestic Theatre, the country's first stand-alone Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) theatre, opens to the public today!

Some of the theatre's green features include:

Local, recycled construction materials used throughout building process
Motion-sensor lighting
White membrane roof to reflect solar energy
LED and fluorescent fixtures with programmable controls and sensors
Rainwater and condensation collection - for use in restrooms and landscape irrigation
Indoor air quality enhanced with environmentally friendly adhesives, sealants, cleaning and maintenance products

In addition, the downtown theatre is convenient to public transportation options and provides recycling collection containers throughout the facility. The building has been certified green through the U.S. Green Building Council.

Chattanooga's Majestic Theatre is located downtown at the corner of Broad and Third streets, across from the Creative Discovery Museum. It replaces the city's Bijou Theatre, which will be gutted and turned into commercial space.

eBay goes green

2009-11-04T08:10:00.000-08:00

According to eBay, it IS easy being green! And they're helping make it easier by providing buyers and sellers a chance to raise money for their favorite environmental charities. You can buy from sellers who are donating a percentage of their profits to groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Rainforest Alliance, you can donate a percentage of your own profits if you have items to sell, or you can use PayPal to make a simple donation.

CLICK HERE to learn more.

Happy shopping!!

Energy Vampires

2009-11-02T09:33:00.000-08:00

Halloween may be over, but many of us still have energy vampires - devices that suck electricity even when they're turned off - lurking in our homes. Check out this helpful link for tips on avoiding this year-round enemy. Killing the vampires is good for our wallets ... and good for the earth!

Preaching to the choir?

2009-10-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting article on the Nature Conservancy's blog discussing how those of us who care about conservation can better reach others who don't. The blog author had just returned from a "Green Festival" in Washington, D.C., where she noticed that -- great as the festival lessons were -- they seemed to be merely preaching to the choir, to use an old church analogy. In this post, she offers suggestions ... some obvious, and some surprising. I particularly liked the last recommendation, to "celebrate the free stuff":

(copied directly from article:)
Many people still think that “being green” is expensive, but there are so many things that people can do that are eco-friendly and low cost that you can shout about:

Walking more and driving less. Save on gas and get some exercise at the same time.
Replacing your light bulbs with CFL bulbs. CFL bulbs cost a little more than incandescent bulbs, but they last up to 10 times longer while using about one-fourth of the energy, according to the Energy Department.
Eating more vegetarian meals. Beef averages $3 per pound in U.S. cities and boneless chicken breasts cost about $3.40 a pound. On the other hand, dried legumes and rice are less than $1 a pound.
Shopping (and eating) in season. Steering clear of strawberries and melons in the winter will not only save a lot of dough, you’ll avoid having your fruit shipped around the world.
Shopping online. No, not online stores, but on sites such as Craigslist or Freecycle, where you can find secondhand goods — everything from furniture to house wares to baby clothes — for really cheap or often completely free!

Challenge yourself to implement just one new strategy!! Every little bit helps, and you'll be showing others a great example of stewardship!

Welcome!

2009-10-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to God's Green Gang blog! GGG is a new "green" ministry of Christ United Methodist Church; our goal is to increase awareness of environmental stewardship and service to God through green living. Stay tuned for lots of great information, green tips, book reviews, product recommendations, and more!

Why I recycle

2009-10-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

I posted this on my personal blog back in April and thought I'd share it here too.
-LeeAnne

-------------------------------------------

In all seriousness, I challenge everyone reading this to make one change -- just one small change -- in an effort to becoming more earth-friendly. It might be switching to compact flourescent bulbs. It might be shopping at local farmers' markets instead of big chain stores. It might simply be turning off lights and other electricity-eating devices when you're not using them. It might be a new commitment to recycling (Chattanooga DOES have this, and even if you don't have curbside pickup within the city limits, you CAN still drop items off at any recycling center.) It never fails to amaze me how many Christians don't worry about the environment and don't seem to do anything to take care of God's creation. The way I see it, He gave us this planet -- a planet that, unlike any other in the world, sustains human life so perfectly -- and we're killing it. Every day. Little by little. My personal environmentalism isn't because I'm an animal-loving-tree-hugging-granola-eating-vegetarian weirdo ... it's because I'm a Christian and I want to respect and honor the world I believe God created for us.

I'll step off my soapbox now and leave you with one plea: Don't be Stupid.

Happy Earth Day.