Environmental Champion St Mary Magdalene church now operates as an eco church — putting a focus on minimising its carbon footprint and encouraging the congregation to make green lifestyle changes.
In the past year the parish church has achieved Silver Eco Church award, meeting all the criteria for the second level certification.
It forms part of the Church of England's ambition to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2035.
The church has begun to shift the mentality of individuals, encouraging them to make lifestyle changes, and has taken steps to make its buildings and facilities more energy efficient and sustainable.
This includes replacing lamps with LEDs, lowered heating, using recycled toilet and photocopying paper, reducing single use plastics and recycling all plastic waste, and installing nesting boxes and a water butt.
It also spreads this message with the church community and wider community through a regular "Eco" update in weekly newsletters, and has raised awareness through a week long climate change event which highlighted topics including farming concerns, food concerns, trading in preloved clothing, saving water, conserving energy.
The church now aims is to attain the Eco Church Gold award and has developed an environmental sustainability action plan.
Sue Dutton said: “We are shocked but we are very proud of what we have done.
“It means a massive amount because, with churches and bendings and land and everything, there is an awful lot of things to do.
“It is a lot of hard work from the whole team, to go towards everything that St Mary’s is trying to do right now but this is just one small part of that.
Louise Marshall added: “We are very delighted and the exposure is fantastic, we are trying to educate people about lifestyle, and we have made loads of things from litter picking to hedgehogs.
“These are very exciting times and we can’t wait to move forward.”
Founded in 2015 by Jack Good, shortly after he left school, in just nine years the category’s highly commended business Reuseabox has grown rapidly to a multi-million-pound company.
The certified B Corp — the first in the district — is a packaging provider that promotes circularity, reducing waste by keeping carboard boxes in use for longer before they are recycled, and inspires a global community to take action for the planet.
It has developed partnerships with major names including Royal Mail, Yeo Valley, Oddbox, Tim’s Dairy, Hovis and Evri, helping them make their supply chains more sustainable.
As well as this, Reuseabox has partnered with 1% for the Planet at the start of 2023 and now 1% of its revenue goes directly to environmental partner, Eden Reforestation Projects.
Through Eden, it aims to plant a million trees by 2030 and so far has planted over 200,000 — putting the growing team ahead of target.
Sustainability is at the heart of the business and it also tracks and measures its own carbon footprint and has an action plan to reduce it each year.
