Church Recycling - Our Trial Project (now ended)

"For the Church of the 21st century, good ecology is not an optional extra but a matterof justice. It is therefore central to what it means to be a Christian" Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Church Recycling aims to tackle the amount of garments, fabric and textiles, which can remain unused and unwanted in churches within the Wakefield Diocesan area. Church Recycling aim to recycle all the donated items and pass the recycled items on to poorer parishes within the UK and abroad.

As part of the Church of England's Environmental Policies (particularly the Shrinking the Footprint Campaign, the partnership encouraged to develop with Ecocongregations, and the 'Church and Earth 2009-2016 Plan'), we have a commitment towards reducing the environmental impact.

The Church and the Earth 2009-2016 (The Seven-Year Plan on Climate Change and the Environment)
In the next seven years the scope of Shrinking the Footprint will expand in a number of directions: this includes expansion of the scope, with successive phases to cover reduction of our ecological footprint (waste, water, food, travel) and to enrich the environment (biodiversity and land); and the establishment of strategic partnerships with organisations in the voluntary, public and private sectors to reduce carbon and ecological footprints; Development of further phases of Shrinking the Footprint will aim to reduce the Church's ecological footprint to a "One Planet" level by 2050 at the latest.

Waste disposal and recycling are among topics to be taken into the expanding Shrinking the Footprint campaign. StF will collaborate with regional groups of dioceses, and partners in government at several levels, in order to promote the recycling of waste from churches. This would be an excellent moment to promote local co-operative schemes in which churches play their full part in the common responsibility of all of us to see that we "reduce, re-use and recycle" all our waste, both personally and in our churches.

Shrinking the Footprint and Ecocongregation are committed to working in partnership to encourage Anglican churches in England and Wales to take a lead on reducing every aspect of our environmental impact.

'Church and Earth' was commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Church Commissioners and was developed by the Shrinking the Footprint Task Group.
It is one of nine long-term plans that the world’s major faiths have drawn up.