Saturday, January 31, 2015

Textile Recycling Program: Bloomfield

Town of Bloomfield has 3 Collection points:

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Prescription Medication Disposal : Newington

Source: http://www.newingtonct.gov/content/78/118/140/22371/default.aspx
The Newington Police Department now has a Medication Collection and Disposal Drop Box located in the lobby of the police department. This drop box allows for town residents to dispose their unused prescription drugs in the safest way possible. Please read the information provided below on how these items will be accepted.
Citizens may place their unused medications/drugs into the collection box anonymously.

Please obliterate personal identifying information on containers before depositing.

Opened containers of liquid will not be accepted.

Syringes shall not be placed into the drop box.

Commercial disposal from medical facilities, doctor/dental offices, veterinarians, etc. is prohibited and is not part of this program.

No medication or other waste shall be left outside of the drop box.

The "Drop Box" is pictured below:

Church Recycling Collections

RECYCLING OPPORTUNITIES RIGHT AT CHURCH - Collection Bins in Coat Room

The Green Team would like to thank all those who have brought items to church for recycling. Please continue to recycle paper, inkjet, toner, and laser printer cartridges, and cell phones. NOTE: The Church Office receives $2 in Staples Rewards for each cartridge recycled that Green Team members drop off at Staples.

New Collections:
The Green Team has also added collection bins in the coat room for worn out pens, and hard plastic bottle caps.  AS OF 1/12/2015, we are no longer collecting bottle caps, as Aveda has discontinued this program.

Starting in September 2012, we introduced two new recycling opportunities: Flip-flop recycling, and shoe/sneaker recycling.  Instead of throwing out your worn out flip flops and shoes, simply bring them to church, drop them off in a bin in the coat room and help raise money for the church!!! Any brand of shoes/sneakers and flips flops are accepted. So, if your footwear is too worn out to donate for future use, bring them to church and keep them out of the landfills!

Complete list of Collections:
Let’s continue to be good stewards to the Earth.  Here's what we are currently collecting and how each is recycled and reused.

COAT ROOM:
  • Batteries  - household and rechargeable.  WE ARE NO LONGER COLLECTING ANY TYPE OF BATTERY, DUE TO POTENTIAL FIRE SAFETY ISSUES IN STORING THE BATTERIES.  You will need to check your Town's recycling guidelines for batteries.
  • Hard Plastic Bottle Caps - sent to Aveda for recycling into plastic containers for cosmetics.  AS OF 1/12/2015, we are no longer collecting bottle caps, as Aveda has discontinued this program.
  • Cell Phones - include charger if possible - if working, brought to Newington Senior Center for use by seniors, if not sent to Terracycle for recycling into various products
  • Flip Flops (in pairs) - sent to Terracycle for upcycling or recycling as new rubber products
  • Worn Out Pens - sent to Terracycle for upcycling or recycling as various products
  • Printer Cartridges -laser, toner, inkjet - recycled at Staples for Rewards for Church Office
  • Shoes/Sneakers (in pairs) - sent to Terracycle for recycling into various products
OTHER LOCATIONS:
  • Paper- collected in blue recycling baskets in Narthex, Coat Room, Fellowship Hall, and Church Offices.  Business Recycling pick up by All Waste.  Please take home any paper for recycling at home to help reduce the cost to the Church for Business Recycling.
  • Office Cardboard -  stored by coat rack outside Youth Room on basement level.  Anyone can take home and recycle at home to help reduce the cost to the Church for Business Recycling.
  • Plastic containers used by Group Events -  Each group is responsible for collecting and taking the items home for recycling.  "What you bring in, you take out"



Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Join Us in the Equal Exchange Red Cherry Challenge

Our pledge is 100 lbs of coffee sold.

This year, support farmers in growing healthy, red coffee cherries for generations to come.

Coffee farmers are facing many dire challenges, including changing weather patterns, natural disasters and agricultural diseases like coffee leaf rust.
Help farmers protect their futures and their farms. When you join the Red Cherry Challenge, we will donate 10 cents for every pound of coffee you buy through May 31, 2015 to the Red Cherry Fund, to finance farmer-led initiatives toward resilience and recovery.

UCC Coffee Project Purchases Count Twice

United Church Of Christ

Started in 2004, the UCC Coffee Project is a collaboration 
between Equal Exchange and the United Church of Christ 
Justice and Witness Ministries to involve more 
Congregational churches and individuals in supporting 
small farmers around the world.
For each pound of fairly traded coffee, chocolate, tea, and foods 
purchased through the UCC Coffee Project, 15 cents per pound 
goes to the Justice and Witness Ministries' Small Farmer Fund, 
supporting the UCC Franklinton Center's Just Foods Project, which enhances the
 viability, vitality, and sustainability of families and small farmers in Edgecombe County, 
one of the poorest areas in eastern North Carolina and the United States. 
That Fund amounted to $8,965.02 in 2012 alone!

Eco-Justice Note: Beyond Recycling

Beyond Recycling 
distributed 5/26/06 - ©2006

This week's issue of Eco-Justice Notes is underwritten by Shirley Perkins, of Edina, Minnesota. Her generous support helps make this publication possible.
A few months ago, I was talking to a member of Denver's City Council about one of my pet peeves -- the dumping of multiple varieties of telephone books at our homes and businesses. (See an earlier Notes on that theme, Extortion as Good Business.)
The council member took my comments and complaints seriously, and he provided a well-grounded answer about why the city can't prohibit this absurd and wasteful practice. At the end of the discussion, he commented, "At least we now accept phone books in the curbside recycling bins."
I am glad that, every time those 10+ pounds of yellow pages are unloaded at our doors, we can now recycle them without having to find a specialized and short-term collection center. But my conversation with the council member reminds me that recycling is the very last of the options to be considered by a responsible and ecological citizen.
For many years, we've heard of the "3 Rs" -- reduce, reuse, recycle. Some folk have added a fourth R to the start of the list -- refuse. Recently, I've used two more Rs of a different character -- restore and resist -- to expand our consciousness beyond consumer goods. These six words provide concise and solid guidance for our shopping, and for our community behavior.
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The four Rs that are at the core of this list are best seen as a sequence, and not as a collection of independent options. The most important and fruitful options should be considered first, and then the other steps taken as needed.
  • The first and best choice is to REFUSE, or "just say no". My goal with the phone books is to find a way of rejecting the things in the first place. If we all had a way to "opt out" of those deliveries, then far less directories would be printed, and the savings in trees, water, energy and chemicals would be dramatic.The same principle holds with many other choices. Don't buy or accept bottled water. Refuse to go on a business trip when a phone call could accomplish the same purposes. Renounce meat and choose a vegetarian diet. Don't upgrade your computer just because some marketing campaign tells you that it is obsolete.
  • If you can't refuse, then it is time to REDUCE. Minimize your impact by using as little of a product or resource as possible. Reduce your driving to save gas and clean the air. Take short showers and adopt other water-saving practices. If going meatless is too big a step, then cut back your consumption of animal protein. Cancel subscriptions to magazines that you don't read, and get many of your books from a library. Turn off lights, and use energy efficient bulbs.
  • Once you have reduced your consumption, then REUSE what you have. Wash plastic sandwich bags and use them again and again. Use canvas shopping bags over and over. Use the blank side of paper for notepads and scratch paper. Reuse decent clothing year after year, even if it is a bit out our style. Fix broken things, instead of replacing them.
  • And finally, clear at the end of the list, as the last consideration -- once you have refused and reduced and reused in every way that you can -- then RECYCLE what is left over. Instead of sending things to the dump, make sure that the components are appropriately reclaimed for productive use. Recycle vegetable waste by composting. Recycle all your newspapers, bottles and cans. Send old computer equipment to places that will dismantle and dispose of it properly. Donate old clothes and household items to Goodwill. 
As I said, the other two Rs on my list deal with different kinds of behaviors. They extend our awareness and action beyond the home or office. In that sense, they are helpful in making our whole lives more conscientious and caring, and in bringing creative change.
  • RESTORE calls us to go beyond steps that reduce our impact on the planet, and to proactively do things that heal the damage that we cause -- individually and collectively. Plant trees to counterbalance the loss of trees from paper production, and to help soak up carbon dioxide. Clean up a stream. Join in efforts to expand and improve wildlife habitat. Support government efforts to clean up toxic waste dumps. 
  • RESIST reminds us of our obligation to challenge the systems which waste and destroy the planet. Speak out against the perverse values of consumerism. Protest political decisions which exploit both people and natural resources. Advocate for fair trade, and support small businesses. Write letters to the editor, speak up in church, and challenge policies at the office. Talk to your neighbors, vote for shareholder resolutions, and buy your food from local farmers.
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Many churches use recycling projects as a helpful way to introduce ecological stewardship to their members. That can be a wonderful starting point, and a visible expression of commitment.
But if that single "R" is seen as an adequate expression of environmental concern and responsibility, then the message is not complete. Recycling is what we do after we have refused, reduced and reused. It is an activity that parallels our efforts to resist and restore.
If your church doesn't have an active recycling program, then that's an essential step to take. And then, once your members have started to become conscious of their responsibility for "stuff," be sure to educate and advocate for the other five Rs, too.

Shalom!Peter Sawtell
Executive Director
Eco-Justice Ministries
http://www.eco-justice.org/E-060526.asp

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Eco-Justice Note: A Single Year


A Single Year 
distributed 12/30/03, 12/20/10 & 12/27/13 - ©2013
The end of December is a perfect time to ponder humanity's place in the whole creation.

As we live our daily lives in this human-dominated world, our experience and routine awareness let us think that "this is the way it has always been." All of the news summaries that we'll see in coming days focus our attention on events of the last 12 months, truncating even a minimal sense of history.

Of course, we know about the scientific cosmology that tells of a vast sweep of time. We know that modern humans occupy just a tiny sliver of that long historical record. But we hold that knowledge in our heads, not our guts. The vast 4.6 billion year history of the Earth is way too big for us to grasp in a meaningful or personal way.

And so I have often been touched by narratives that condense the history of the Earth into a more manageable time frame. There are many variations -- some do it in a week, others in a single year. Some start the story with "the big bang" while others begin with the formation of the Earth as a recognizable planet.

These days leading up to New Year's Eve are a wonderful occasion to feel the long story of the Earth, and to appreciate our part in that narrative. In the last days of a calendar year, it is easy to connect with the "one year" image. And so, as we come to the end of December, I invite you to feel a condensed time frame for the Earth's story ...

January 1st marks the origin of Earth. By the end of February, the first simple cells appear. All the way through the spring and early summer, simple plants enrich the atmosphere with oxygen.

Around mid-August, complex cells emerge, and coral appears in the ocean. Beginning in mid-November, the oceans fill with multicellular life-forms. In the last few days of November, freshwater fish appear, and the first vascular plants begin to grow on land.

About December 1st, amphibians venture onto dry land. The great swamps that formed today's rich coal beds existed between December 5th and 7th. On December 12th the largest of the Earth's mass extinctions wipes out 95% of all species.

Life bounces back, and dinosaurs evolve on December 13th. Flowering plants come on the scene on December 20th. In another great extinction, the dinosaurs disappear shortly before midnight on December 26th, opening a space for modern mammals to emerge on the 27th.

On the evening of December 31st -- about when you might gather with friends for the New Year's Eve celebration -- the first hominids evolve in East Africa.

At 10 minutes to midnight on December 31st -- about when all the party-goers are really starting to watch the clock -- Neanderthals spread throughout Europe.

At one minute to midnight, agriculture is invented. Toward the end of that last minute, the Roman Empire fills 5 seconds. It collapses at 11:59:50 -- the moment in our compressed year when New Year's celebrants begin their 10-second countdown.

In the last 2 seconds before midnight, we enter the modern industrial era. In those last two seconds we find the explosive growth of the human population, the rise of complex technologies, and what we might call a globalized human culture.

The entire history of the United States fits into the last second of this narrative. The "petroleum era" of cheap and plentiful energy is crammed into the last half of a second, as we're holding a deep breath, ready to shout our start-of-a-new-year greetings.

The fireworks start as our dash through Earth's long history brings us to the current moment, and as we move into the future.

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Sierra Club founder David Brower often told such a condensed history of the Earth. He ended the account by saying, "We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for [the two seconds since the Industrial Revolution began] can go on indefinitely. They are considered normal, but they are stark, raving mad."

As our compressed race through global history moves into the future, by the time we have finished shouting "Happy New Year!" we are already 2 centuries beyond now. The available supplies of oil will have been exhausted, and the effects of global climate change will have taken dramatic hold. If our current way of life continues, a huge percentage of Earth's species -- both plant and animal -- will have been driven into extinction. By the time you take your first deep breath in the next year, Earth's climate and biology will have been forever altered by the human influences of the previous year's last moments.

In this compressed history, the Age of the Dinosaurs lasted almost two weeks. Unless we change our ways dramatically, the Age of the Humans may only last 15 or 20 minutes, and the span of human civilization will fill not much more than a single minute.
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The biblical narrative begins with two beautiful and meaningful creation stories. In both of those accounts, people are part of the Earth's history from the very beginning of time. If we think that people pretty much like us have been key actors in the Earth's entire history, it is easy to think that our story is ultimately important.

This New Year's Eve, I challenge you to pause for a moment. Remember how brief our human span on Earth really is, and reflect on the scope of our planetary impact. May that broadened perception help motivate us in our work toward a more sustainable way of life.

Shalom!Peter Sawtell
Executive Director
Eco-Justice Ministries