Our daily habits are the hardest ones to change but the powerful thing about faith communities is that coming together regularly as a group of people can help give each person that ongoing encouragement, examples and opportunity for discussions and questions to help people make those changes.

Our daily habits are the hardest ones to change but the powerful thing about faith communities is that coming together regularly as a group of people can help give each person that ongoing encouragement, examples and opportunity for discussions and questions to help people make those changes.

People can feel very private about their daily habits or harbour guilt about their environmental impact. We want to help you create the kind of culture that affirms people in the steps they are taking already and generates creative ideas to go further in their journey.
 

Activities

Just as we outlined getting your place of worship to think about transport, energy generation and energy use, consumption and waste in your gatherings together, now you can help people think about these issues in their lives at home. There are several online carbon footprint calculators that you can encourage people to use to become aware of their individual impact as a starting point, and there will be many ideas amongst your community about ways that they can cut down their impact. Think about ways to help your faith community share ideas and celebrate positive steps forward.

Here is one idea you could try at your place of worship:

• Make a tree trunk and branches out of old cardboard to stick on a wall. Have a pen and some leaf shaped pieces of cardboard and pins/blutak available nearby where people can write down the tips they have tried and pin up their leaf on the tree to encourage others. This could also be done as part of a worship service. Alternatively, it could be displayed for a longer time, with the opportunity for people to contribute to it from week to week, perhaps reading out a couple of leaves each week to encourage people to participate and give them ideas.

Here are some suggestions for how community members could help each other become more sustainable in their homes:

• Encourage people to host a Permablitz – where a group of people go to one person’s house to help them set up an edible garden in a day.
    
• Encourage people to do a sustainability audit of their home and invite a few people over to help them implement it (perhaps changing to energy efficient light bulbs and low-flow shower heads, setting up a compost/worm farm system etc) or have a small team in your faith community who would be willing to help people do this.
    
• Encourage people to access local farmers markets or join an initiative like Food Connect that supports local farmers and helps to reduce the food miles of people’s groceries. Perhaps your place of worship or someone in your community could host a local collection hub.
    
• Encourage people to live more simply and consume less, contributing some of their savings to be able to support poor communities trying to adapt to climate change.

Resources

• Carbon footprint calculator
• Reducing energy at home
• The Everyday Guide to Recycling
• Permablitz Melboune and Regional Groups