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  • Creation Care t-shirt designed by the Creation Care Council of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH)

    These t-shirts with a quote from Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si' were created for members of the Creation Care Council of OLPH to wear at creation care events sponsored by their church.

  • Group Profile: St Joseph Montessori School Laudato Si' Club and Honey Bee Project

    A group of St Joseph Montessori School students were inspired by Pope Francis’ letter to the world called Laudato Si.  In his letter, the Pope called for every person on the planet to live more simply, in harmony with nature, to care for each other and our common home.  In other words, the Pope wants us to "bee-have" better towards our environment.

    St Joseph Montessori students formed an Environmental Club called Laudato Si'. The club spent time researching Honey Bees, bee colony collapse, and the importance of bees. They decided they must do something. Students applied for grants, presented plans for two bee hives, an enclosure around the hives, and a pollinator garden to the school and Sacred Heart parish leadership. They required permissions to use school and church property for the bee hives. They even submitted plans to the local government, for approval.

    They met with a bee-keeper to get some advice on building the hives. Throughout the winter months, they developed materials to share with the younger grade levels and during our Earth Day Celebrations on April 18, they presented to small groups within the school on bees and how they help the environment. The students passed out information flyers, along with wildflower seeds, to the surrounding homes explaining the bee hives and the importance of not treating their lawns with chemicals.

    The Laudato Si Club evaluated the campus and identified an area where the bees would be able to co-exist with their surroundings but not interfere with the students and community. The area gets ample sunlight which will allow the bees to survive Ohio Winters. It is also elevated with a building nearby; this created a flight path for the bees that force them away from the playground and high foot traffic areas. It is also near an area of the school that has garden and flower beds that have been converted into pollinator gardens.

    Now they manage two active hives of honey bees (St. Ambrose hive and St. Abigail hive) and a small pollinator garden, named after St. Kateri. We hope to have healthy bees -- and maybe some honey -- for years to come.

  • Denominational Policy Statement: Caring for Creation:Vision, Hope, and Justice

    This is the general ELCA statement on faith and the environment, approved by the third Churchwide Assembly in 1993, in Kansas City, MO.

  • Congregational Profile: St Francis of Assisi parish Creation Care Team, Columbus, OH

    When St. Francis of Assisi’s Creation Care Team volunteered to take responsibility for caring for the church’s flower and vegetable gardens in the summer of 2018 it faced a challenge: how to dispose of yard waste in a responsible manner. The parish did not have resources to hire a vendor to appropriately dispose of leaves and garden debris and hauling it away in our private cars while possible would take extra time. The Team members did know though that we did not want to continue to toss the yard waste in the trash, which is what had previously been done.
     
    Luckily a solution was at hand: a new member of our parish and our Creation Care Team—Todd Marti-- serves as one of the “garden stewards” at Upper Arlington Lutheran Church’s community garden at Mill Run. Todd volunteered to haul away the yard waste from St. Francis and add it to the compost bins at the community garden. So St. Francis’ yard waste helps grow food that when harvested feeds hungry families through Neighbors (SON) Ministries’ Hilliard Free Lunch Summer Camp for Kids program, the Hilltop, Mid-Ohio Food Bank, and through Faith Mission-- a win for all involved.

  • Recycling Program at St Francis of Assisi, Columbus, OH

    St Francis of Assisi has maintained a recycling program for the parish for many years. In the parish hall, there are three different colored bins to separate out paper, plastics, and metals. In the church parking lot, there is one bin for garbage and another bin for recycling. They have been working with Republic Services, Inc. to haul away recyclables and other waste. Through their contract, Republic currently accepts aluminum, glass and plastic items if each are bagged separately and placed in the recycling bin. Republic also provides contracts that allow for recyclable items to be collected all together.

  • Resources for Preaching: On Caring for God's Creation

    Resources for Preaching: On Caring for God's Creation offers that one does not need to be an expert in the field to preach about environmental justice. The authors encourage homilists to focus on what they know, what's around them, and what can be learned relatively easily. One example is to draw upon surrounding physical beauty or examine what is being destroyed in the area. This resource provides an outline of pertinent themes that can lead to future discussions, as well as opportunities to incorporate crucial eco-friendly messages into parishioners daily lives.

  • Church Hall Sustainability Guidelines at St Francis of Assisi, Columbus, OH

    This is a one-page list of guidelines created by the Creation Care Team at St Francis of Assisi to provide guidance for sustainable use of the parish hall; includes instructions about recycling, food waste, utensil use, energy use, etc.

  • Prayer for Creation

    This Prayer for Creation reminds us to give thanks for the basics of living that nature provides us and to ask for forgiveness for the times that we have taken the Earth's resources for granted. It is also a reminder that the vulnerable often do not even have regular access to clean food and/or water.

  • Bulletin Insert on Laudato Si'

    This insert provides reminders for some of the salient principles of the Laudato Si' encyclical, including: caring for our common home as we are all connected; remembering the poor, who are more affected by environmental impacts; and protecting life in all it's forms. It also focuses on courses of action one can take to support these critical issues.

  • Parish Recycling Guidelines for St Francis of Assisi, Columbus, OH

    St Francis of Assisi parish has created a guideline sheet to assist members with the recycling program, located in the parish hall. There are three different colored bins to separate out paper, plastics, and metals. Some commonly used items that can be recycled include soda bottles, cardboard, junk mail, and aluminum cans. Some commonly used items that can not be recycled include Styrofoam, aluminum foil, batteries, and clothing.

  • Bishop Hartley High School, Columbus, OH

    Bishop Hartley has assembled a Care 4 Creation faculty committee, which focuses on long-term plans at the school. There is also a Care 4 Creation Association, which is for students and is also student-led. Instructors Rick Kohut and Ann Hawk have spearheaded some of the more long-term creation care projects there. Each have set up a vermicomposting bin in their classrooms, offering that it works well and is relatively low maintenance. Students from one of Rick’s classes had worked on a project where they created a poster/chart with pictures of endangered animals. Some of the students from Rick's classes engaged in the school's climate strike. One highly motivated student, Jamal, wrote a letter about the event which he sent to local politicians. Ann has been attending a yearly AEP Ohio energy efficiency program, and they in turn provide her with free energy savings kits for each of her students. AEP also offers energy saving kits for residential customers who are willing to complete their online Home Energy Profile. In addition, two new drinking fountains are about to be installed at the school that are designed to fill reusable water bottles. The school is also in the process of creating water bottles for sale with their school’s logo on them. The intent is to cut down on students and faculty purchasing and bringing in individual plastic bottles of water.

  • Engaged Organizations: St. Vincent de Paul School, Mt. Vernon, OH

    Creation care work at St Vincent de Paul School, Mt. Vernon, began in 2006 when the school received funding from the Knights of Columbus to purchase a dishwasher for their kitchen. Following this, the school began participating in the Hope Now program – an organization that provides used old donated doors to build tables. The school provides transportation to their annual K-6 field trip to The Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College and their annual 5th grade summer camp through Lutheran Outdoor Ministries in Ohio (students take turns weighing food waste). Additional sustainability projects include collaboration with the parish and the local community. The school participated in an all-parish project through the Green Tree Plastics company’s A Bench for Caps sustainability program (students collected and sorted bottle caps in exchange for three benches). The school plans to create a grotto area using their three recycled benches. In order to foster green living and healthy community-school relations, the school provided planter flowers to local businesses.

    Administrators at St. Vincent de Paul acknowledge the importance of maintaining social justice programs in accordance with Laudato Si's urgent message to care for the poor. Students from Beth’s Robinson's 6th grade social studies classes participate in a demographics project. Each year students select one continent, usually Africa, to learn more about the conditions of poverty. The class then raises money through various fundraisers and donate to parts of the continent through Catholic Relief Services. An upcoming project includes having students sew plastic bags together to create tarps to be donated to homeless shelters in the area.

  • Engaged Organizations: Recyclean, Inc. Kenosha, WI

    Recyclean, Inc., is a deconstruction company located in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with a new branch to be opened in Columbus, OH in the near future. About 15 years ago, the owner recognized that there was too much waste entering landfills, as construction landfill waste is predicted to double by the year 2025. The company focuses on the reuse and recycling of materials and structures from the deconstruction work of their residential projects, which comprises 70 percent of their business, as a way to decrease the amount of materials that enter the landfills. Prior to renovations and tear downs, the company provides a quote for the materials and a 3rd party independent appraiser assigns value to the estimated donation value. Some of the materials are donated to community charities – i.e. Restores of Habitat for Humanity or Columbus Architectural Salvage. Homeowner are able to choose a charity based on the options provided by the company. Other materials, such as brick and wood, are recycled (purchased for use elsewhere). Recyclean, Inc. aims for 70 percent of the materials to be recycled and reused. The company also provides facilitation for the transfer, including delivery of materials and building structures, to their respective designated entities.

  • Engaged Organizations: The Catholic Foundation of Ohio - Columbus

    The Catholic Foundation of Columbus, Ohio is designed to be responsive to interests that come from within the diocesan parishes and schools. To the extent that those interests have included creation care work, there has been grant activity. Dan Kurth, Director of Grants for the Catholic Foundation, offers that the foundation’s rubric for creation care initiatives is essentially: Does this project have any green energy sustainability pieces to it? The energy efficiency component of the foundation’s responsive grants is the main integration of a Laudato Si' principle into the foundation's grant work. As the Laudato Si encyclical has grown in awareness, more funding has become available as energy efficiency-related projects have become more commonplace over time.

    The foundation has recently partnered with the Columbus Catholic Diocese on their Diocean Loan LED program, which has had considerable impact on diocesan savings. In addition, the foundation encourages schools to establish their own maintenance reserve funds in order to maintain more efficient operations. Specifically, there is a push to have schools and parishes upgrade their boilers, change over to LED lighting, and replace their windows with more efficient ones.

  • Engaged Organizations: Trinity Catholic Elementary School, Columbus, OH

    Creation care work at Trinity Catholic (see link below) began when one teacher there took the initiative to organize student gardening activities on school grounds. Following her retirement, the school subsequently began an annual Earth Day project in which students pick up trash around the school and surrounding area. Additional creation care projects were added over time. As a means to support social justice issues in accordance with Laudato Si' principles, the school contributes to food pantries on a regular basis. The proceeds from the monthly cereal mornings are designated to various local charities as well. As a way to physically demonstrate to students how much food is wasted in a typical day, students could weigh and record the wasted food from the cafeteria over a two-week period.

    Years ago, one of the technology instructors had received a small grant from a computer company, which was designed to have students complete various environmentally based activities in a contest format. At the end of the contest, the class had accumulated enough points to receive two computer cameras. Additional events and projects includes 4th and 5th grader participation in a 5-day environmental camp "Messages of the Earth" at the Stratford Ecological Center (see link below), two water fountains updated to accommodate individuals with disabilities, design of the water fountains to fill water bottles, and lights throughout the school buildings switched out to LED lights through the Diocesan grant program.

  • Engaged Organizations: Christ the King Catholic Church, Columbus, OH

    Jason Cervenec, Education and Outreach Director for OSU's Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, has helped plan and carry out a number of initiatives for events and projects at Christ the King Catholic Church over the past few years. With the assistance of Deb Steele, the Volunteer Coordinator for Ohio Interfaith Power and Light (Ohio IPL), Jason has organized energy audits that were conducted by Ohio IPL programming and support. The LED retrofit with diocese Facility Director, Bruce Boyan, has been a noteworthy achievement at the parish as well. Additional energy efficient projects have included window replacement (also with Bruce) and the installation of an HVAC system. While the parish center is currently undergoing renovation work, Jason and other parishioners have reviewed the plans to look for additional efficiency and sustainability improvements. Recently, Jason had designed creation care bulletin inserts, with feedback from the Creation Care team at the Columbus Catholic Diocese, that have been widely circulate around town. The annual creation care information program that Jason initiated has garnered substantial support, with roughly 30 people in attendance each time. An additional work in progress project includes the installation of a bike rack station outside of the parish.

  • Engaged Organizations: Springs Dominican motherhouse, Columbus, OH

    The Springs Dominican motherhouse hosts 150 individuals (maintaining 76 beds). Initial green projects included replacing their lights with LED bulbs and replacing seven boilers, which had been there since the 1940s, with just one new one. Recently, Innovative Organic Recycling composting company had been invited to speak with house members, and their composting program took off from there. Jean Sylvester, Motherhouse Administrator, had found it easy to do at her own house and was also aware of Shepherd’s Corner success with it. Both staff and residents adapted quickly and the process is streamlined at this point. Composting is done by the sisters themselves, with administration providing the bags and cans. In addition to composting food, even the bones, all of plates and cups, including coffee cups, can be composted as well.

    For administration, this is a business model that makes practical sense. Management had been quoted at $35 per pick up, so they decided to give it a two-week trial period. Overall, composting has been a "win-win" for them, with its ease of implementation and minimal ongoing efforts. In addition, their dock smells better because the food waste bags are not left open in the dumpster now. There is also less garbage for RUMPKE to take, so the project cost savings of waste management will be reaped over time .

  • Engaged Organizations: Shepherd's Corner, Blacklick, OH

    In 1966, the Dominican Sisters of Peace had purchased 160 acres of land in Blacklick, Ohio, for what eventually evolved into the formation of various farms and ecology centers. Shepherd’s Corner is one part of this larger network. Srs. Rosie Ann Van Buren and Marguerite Chandler maintain their 1.5 acres well and use the area predominantly for educational purposes, with most food (usually 60-65% but more recently 80%) donated to local food pantries.

    The following are some of the current activities and events that take place at Shepherd’s Corner: Sorting donated food from Fresh Market's food waste into compost or food to animals, Shepherd’s Fest, 5K – their main fundraiser, walking trails throughout the property, groups volunteering to garden, St. Charles high school students volunteering one Saturday per month, Meet the Animals, space rentals, school groups walk through the woods, small farm stand every Tuesday (run by Julie Laudick), slide show, calendar designed with a plan of action or set of events for each month. Srs. Rosie and Marguerite also monitor the water for Blacklick Creek, along with other individuals who are affiliated with county soil and water work.

    Shepherd's Corner offers several group activities as well:

    School groups and other youth groups, grades 3, 4, and 5 are invited to Shepherd’s Corner for educational programs. Cost per student is based on length of program and supplies needed.

    Adult groups can enjoy the space for tranquility meditation, and prayer. Staff is available to give tours and lead sessions on special topics such as spirituality, universe story, nature and gardening. Fees are based on length of program and services provided.

    They also offer use of our space to groups whose mission is compatible with ours. Please contact Miranda Land at scecologycenter@gmail.com regarding facility rental.

  • Engaged Organizations: Catholic Diocese of Columbus, OH Development and Planning

    Andrea Pannell, Episcopal Moderator for the Columbus Catholic Diocese, has been instrumental in the progress of creation care work within the office of development and planning. She views part of her job as to "plant seeds" whenever possible. The Bishop Pastoral Council, comprised of representatives from deaneries within the metro area, attend periodic meetings to address critical creation care issues. One project takes place at Andrea's own parish, St. Dominic’s Church, in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood of Columbus. They had maintained a vegetable garden to provide food for those in the area, some of whom rely on walking to get their groceries. The garden continues to be the only place for some locals to receive fresh food, as the area is considered to be a food desert. The development office was also key in linking the diocese's 150th anniversary and Laudato Si' with their tree planting initiative, as well as connecting the themes of the anniversary with salient points of Laudato Si'. Additional plans for further connections with development, planning and stewardship are still in the works.

  • Engaged Organizations: Catholic Diocese of Columbus, OH Facilities Team

    Bruce Boyon, Facilities Director at the Columbus Catholic Diocese, began promoting light replacement with LED bulbs early on relative to other organizations in the area. The downtown cathedral lights had started to become old and dangerous over time, so Bruce found a replacement LED tube bulb that made economic sense and was convenient to use. These bulbs don’t need to be change as often because they are designed to last longer (5-year warranty) and generate less heat, so less is AC is needed. In total, there has been over $600,000 in savings since the start of the diocesan project. AEP had rolled out rebates for bulbs and other energy efficiency improvements, which provided for a favorable business model to prospective users. In accordance with principles from Laudato Si', the aim is to push for a larger movement to change over to more efficient sources of energy.

  • Creation Care Tips Winter 2020

    This Creation Care bulletin insert provides a message from Pope Francis on how even small actions on a daily basis can impact the earth and fellow humans in great ways. It focuses on reducing waste by composting, cutting back on purchases, and recycling.

  • Engaged Organizations: Stratford Ecological Center

    The Stratford Ecological Center is an organic farm and nature preserve that provides education sessions, tours, and hiking trails to the public. They also offer various workshops and classes on an ongoing basis.

    Trinity Catholic Elementary School 4th and 5th graders participation each year in a 5-day environmental camp "Messages of the Earth" at the Stratford Ecological Center.

  • Engaged Organizations: Habitat for Humanity Restore

    Habitat MidOhio Restores aims to reduce costs associated with affordable housing construction as well as reduce the amount of waste going into landfills. Restores accepts new or used household items and materials from individuals or businesses. The proceeds then assist with Habitat MidOhio's administrative costs in building affordable housing.

    Recycling Inc. often donates there following their building deconstruction projects.

  • Engaged Organizations: Kenyon College Brown Family Environmental Center

    The Brown Environmental Center at Kenyon College offers both self-guided and educational sessions that showcase their diverse range of natural habitats that are maintained at the center.

    St. Vincent de Paul in Mt. Vernon, Ohio makes annual trips for their K-6 students.

  • Engaged Organizations: Green Tree Plastics - A Bench for Caps Program

    Green Tree Plastics offers a children's program, ABC Cap and Lid program, for any children's organization. Children have the opportunity to collect, sort, and weigh caps and lids as part of their program contract. The children then receive a bench in which they are designated as the owner.

    St. Vincent de Paul School in Mt. Vernon, Ohio has participated in the program and received three benches from students' effort with the program.