In the middle of this month (14th-20th October) it is National Recycling Week.
“It’s the one week of the year where retailers, brands, waste management companies, trade associations, governments and the media come together to achieve one goal: to galvanise the public into recycling more of the right things, more often.”
We at Bradford Cathedral continue to be a significant voice in our city and wider afield promoting and encouraging change in areas which impact the climate and the environment. Early this year we were awarded a Silver Award from A Rocha’s Eco-Church scheme in light of our historic work. We are now looking at ways we can expand and develop our work in order to achieve the coveted Gold Award!
We didn’t score very highly on practical communication: we need help on “reducing, reusing, and recycling” – in that order! The national recycling campaign gives us the opportunity to encourage one another to intentionally consider our relationship to waste.
Did you know that we are a collection point for recycling the following items: spectacles, pens/pencils, inkjet cartridges, stamps and batteries? This means that instead of throwing those things away you can bring them into the Cathedral and we will ensure that they are reused or recycled appropriately.
But we’re not satisfied to just encourage the regular congregation to recycle these products; we are also wanting to use our large social media reach to encourage people across that audience to consider recycling the right things more often. With that in mind we are creating a week long social media campaign, posting images of people recycling less obvious items in the hope that this will inspire others to consider what they recycle and what they don’t.
Please consider sending us a photo of you recycling items which others may not think to recycle… you can make it as funny or serious as you like! Send the photos to philip.lickley@bradfordcathedral.org
You may ask, “Why?” Why do we need to recycle? There are many benefits; let me select just three:
- It helps in reducing the need to extract natural resources from the ground and depleting these for future generations.
- It helps to reduce the amount of land used as landfill and thus reduces the pollution of the ground as well as taking up space which could be used for other more diverse needs.
- It helps us to consider how our actions and behaviours impact the world and other people.
This third reason is the one I’d like you to focus on this month. Too often we make unconscious decisions and do not consider how it will change someone else’s life in small or big ways. Think of the world as a large home with humanity as a family living side by side. When someone in the house regularly makes choices which have a negative impact on you, you would want there to be some rules which limit that so harmony can be restored. The same is true on the global scale. With limited space in the UK we export around 2 million tonnes of waste elsewhere in the world. That’s like a person who shares your home putting their rubbish in your bedroom and asking you to deal with it!
Reducing, reusing, recycling (including using recycled products) helps us to appreciate and acknowledge that our large scale consumption is not sustainable and we should take responsibility for the part we play in this culture. Choosing to understand the impact of our waste and who we’re forcing to deal with it may lead to new ways in which we interact with others in our global family.
The Revd Canon Ned Lunn, Canon for Intercultural Mission and the Arts