St James The Great

​Old Milverton, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

​Geoff's Eco Tips

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Geoff’s Eco-Challenge for the summer

The first week of the summer months this year will start with the general election. Environmentally, it’s a chance for us to consider and engage on current policies and key issues.

Before deciding on your preferred candidate, challenge yourself to find out what their stance is on environmental issues – locally, nationally and globally. It may well be that you decide to vote on the basis of other important considerations, however, its good and important to know what you are voting for in terms of environmental policies. You can find out details by reading the leaflets that are bombarding our letterboxes, looking on websites or even by emailing the candidates. Here are a few useful website links that you could look at initially:

Elections in your area | Electoral Commission - provides details of the candidates standing for election when you input your postcode.

Home - engaGE24 | A project of CARE – this is CARE’s (Christian Action, Research and Education) dedicated website on the 2024 General Election, equipping Christians to think, act, and pray before they vote.

Pray Your Part: General Election 2024 | The Church of England – This provides daily prayers and reflections as we run up to the election. It started in mid-June, but runs right up to election day, so there’s still a little time to participate.

Before moving on, I should also say that considering environmental issues during the electionwill help boost our Eco church credentials in the community and global engagement category moving us forward towards that next Silver Award.

The summer holidays can seem like a long time if you have the children or grandchildren at home. Here’s something you could use to help keep them occupied and challenged, although it’s certainly not applicable just to the children.

Attached to the update this month is a chart of summer Eco challenges (for children of every age).

You could print it off and put it on the fridge and challenge yourself and your family to tick off as many things as you can through the summer. The chart was devised by the UK Schools Sustainability Network about 3 years ago, however, the challenges are all equally valid now and most of the website links are still accessible.

With love, Geoff

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Thank you Geoff – I’m going to have a go at the challenges. If you give them try, do let us know how you got on. There will be some paper copies of the Challenge sheet at the back of church if you want to pick one up and share it with other friends and family.