Green your summer travel!

Top 10 Green Travel Tips- Most courtesy of www.travelchannel.com

1.      Go biking. Reduce your carbon footprint and participate in earth-friendly transportation options like biking, walking, and taking public transit. These alternatives are often cheaper than taking a cab or renting a car.

2.      Reuse bottles. A plastic bottle often travels thousands of miles before you buy it, so carry a reusable container or drink locally sourced water when you’re on the go.

3.      Fly non-stop. A significant percentage of a plane’s carbon emissions come from takeoff and landing, so book non-stop flights whenever possible.

4.      Eat and buy local. Wherever you travel, buy local products instead of items that have been flown or shipped from overseas. However, avoid products made from endangered animals or plants. In most cases, you can’t get them through customs anyway. Eating locally is one of the best ways to support a community. Try to shop at farmers’ markets and dine at restaurants with locally sourced ingredients.

5.      Work the land. Stay at a working farm that also functions as an inn. This unique experience helps travelers connect with an area’s agricultural heritage—and usually costs less than a hotel.

6.      Recycle. Don’t let your good recycling habits stop just because you’re on vacation. Ask about your hotel’s recycling program, and sort your trash accordingly. If your hotel doesn’t recycle, consider taking your empty bottles or other materials home and recycling them there.

7.      Stay on the trail! Don’t veer off marked trails when hiking, and maintain a safe distance from any animals you encounter. Deposit your trash in marked receptacles or take it with you when you leave. Light campfires only in areas where permitted, and be sure they’re completely out before you leave.

8.      Try a hybrid. When renting a car for travel, choose the smallest vehicle or a hybrid. Decline any “free” upgrades that can cost you more in gas. Consider renting an economy car if your personal vehicle is a large gass-guzzler—you’ll save gas and avoid putting miles on your own vehicle.

9.      Stay at green hotels. Did you know Las Vegas is at the forefront of green building? The Palazzo Hotel Vegas is one of the largest hotels in the U.S. to receive LEED certification—95 percent of its structural steel and 26 percent of its concrete is recycled material. Pools are heated by solar power, and the hotel claims to save enough energy annually to light a 100-watt bulb for more than 12,000 years!

10.  Watch your speed. Gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph. For each 5 mph you drive over 60, assume you’ll pay an additional $0.31 per gallon for gas.

For more information, check out the following websites: 

Basic tips and suggestions:

·         http://www.greenty.com/

·         www.fueleconomy.gov

·         www.gogreentravelgreen.com

·         http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18079740/ns/travel-active_travel/t/green-travel-tips/

Green hotels:

·         www.chattanoogagreenlodging.com

·         http://www.travelocity.com/TravelForGood/gr-directory.html

·         http://greentravelhub.com/

Ecotourism/working farms:

·         http://www.wwoof.org/

·         http://www.ecotourism.org/

Green Cleanup

Church and Green Team members met during Earth Week to pick up litter behind Petsmart on Gumbarrel Road. In about an hour, more than 20 volunteers of all ages made a HUGE dent in the litter along the road. 

We think this may become a regular service project!! Go green team!

Green your summer!!

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!

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

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

"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

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.