Our vicar asked me in June 2007 if I would take the job of reducing our church’s carbon footprint.

I knew something about “Global Warming” but I needed to find out more. So I read a number of books and the most helpful were:

“Heat” by George Monbiot,
“How many light bulbs does it take to change a Christian?” by David Shreeve
“Carbon Calculator” by Mark Lynas
“Planetwise” by Dave Bookless
I also researched material on the Internet, and it was “Ice core” evidence that convinced me that man-made C02 was responsible for climate change.

I convened a working group and we decided that lowering our church’s carbon foot print should involve the congregation in reducing their own footprints: as well as our making our church buildings as energy efficient as possible.

My wife Carolyn and I felt we couldn’t ask others to try anything that we had not tried ourselves. We calculated our own carbon footprint in 2007 as 9.9 tonnes.

We began by changing our light bulbs. Our double- glazing needed replacing and we considered the thermal efficiency of the products, as well as price.

We started using public transport and walking to church; we could now go to the pub on the way home. We realised that we didn’t need two cars, so we sold one. When we changed the remaining car, the replacement was more comfortable, bigger and sportier than our last one and has better C02 emission figures! We decided to give up flying, this year we travelled to France by Euro Star and SNCF.

We regularly read our meters, whilst looking for a cheap electricity tariff, we found out about “Ecotricity” and signed up, this meant our electricity consumption could be removed from our carbon footprint calculations.

Undoubtedly, carbon footprint reduction requires life style revision.

We grow a proportion of our own vegetables organically on our allotment and we try to buy as much seasonal, local produce as we can. We now eat less meat and very little dairy produce. We do not leave anything on “Stand by”, we’ve turned our thermostats down and we don’t boil a full kettle unless we need to. The washing gets done at the lowest temperature possible, we use the tumble drier only when necessary and I wash up instead of using the dishwasher…. Sometimes!

My friends at St Stephen’s are endlessly supportive and we are making a difference.

* Carbon footprint is calculated using formulae published in “Carbon Calculator” by Mark Lynas. Pub. Collins.

Richard Foreman. St Stephen's Rednal and a memeber of the Bishop's Environmental Round Table.