Earth Care Ministry
The Earth Care Ministry (formerly St. Lucas’ Environmental Committee) began about 15 years ago when several people who volunteered in the church kitchen got tired of unnecessary waste and began recycling. After establishing that step throughout the church, they learned how to compost food waste and began looking for other ways to save resources and energy. As the group created a “greener” church, the committee learned of many unexpected opportunities.
Our mission is to educate and involve church members, staff, and visitors in ongoing projects to take care of our enviornment.
Over the years the Earth Care Ministry has worked to:
- Place blue bins for single stream recycling in locations throughout the church
- Retrofit the church with LED lights
- Install occupancy sensors in the upstairs restrooms and downstairs youth room
- Establish composting in the church kitchen
- Stock the kitchen with only washable and compostable items (even plastic cups)
- Organize church and community collection drives for bicycles, computers and electronics, and paint recycling
- Offer artificial Christmas Tree, metal wreath, and light string recycling
- Conduct special collection and recycling drives through the TerraCycle organization
- Provide a clothing donation drop box in the church parking lot operated by charityclothingpickup.com.
We supply Equal Exchange coffee for all church events. Equal Exchange is a coffee company that seeks to build long-term trade partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound.
We make Lydia's House pot pies (and select fair trade items) available for sale during the year. Lydia’s Ladle empowers and employs women who are victims of domestic violence by providing safe, confidentially located work placement.
We have an ongoing collection of alkaline batteries, printer cartridges, cell phones and eyeglasses for recycling.
While you are at St. Lucas UCC, you are helping to create a better world—when you use the appropriate bins for recyclable products and trash, make use of the composting container in the kitchen, and contribute to the various recycling collections and drives.
During Sunday morning coffee time, please place your napkins, wooden stirrers and uneaten doughnuts in the bin provided on the dirty coffee cup cart—less trash and more compostables is always a good thing!
Thank you for your participation in these ECM efforts!
To learn more about Earth Care and some of are partners check out:
bworks.org (St. Louis bicycle repair/donations)