First Anniversary of our Sustainability Team

First Anniversary of our Sustainability Team
FORUM cover on June 16, 2013, (Written by Kelly Gauthier).

“God’s creation is one and it is good. The concerns for non-violence, sustainable development, justice and peace, and care for our environment are of vital importance for humanity.” 
- Pope Benedict XVI at World Youth Day, June 2008

At St. Francis, we take seriously the Church’s teaching to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation. 

July marks the first anniversary of our Sustainability Team. 
We would like to take a moment to celebrate the tremendous work our parish has done to care for God’s creation. We piloted a Sustainability Framework for Faith Communities that was developed by Michigan Interfaith Power & Light (MI-IPL). The purpose of our Sustainability Project is to educate parishioners on the effects of warming trends globally that have the greatest impact on the poorest among us and on future generations so that we can:   

• Work together to build up the capacity of our parish and parishioners to be good environmental stewards 
• Make the needed changes in our parish and in our homes to improve our stewardship of God’s creation and reduce our carbon footprints 

If you are interested in joining the Sustainability Team, please contact Steve Lavender at slavende@att.net  or (734) 973-2564.


During this past year we accomplished: 

“Getting Started” Activities

• Gained commitment from parish leadership 
• Developed a coherent framework 
• Identified leaders 
• Created a Sustainability Team with over 30 members 
• Interviewed parish & school staff to gauge interest 
• Created a logo and tagline 
• Held a brainstorming session to generate ideas for sustainability activities 

Building the Faith Foundation
Care for Creation: Reinforced Church teachings by-

• Incorporating sustainability into Prayers of the Faithful 
• Publishing over 35 sustainability-related articles in the Forum 

Environmental Justice

• Lenten project raised over $12,000 for a Habitat for Humanity home built with sustainable practices & features 
• Holy Thursday collection raised over $2,300 for Water Missions International, (which provides clean water projects to remote locations such as in Haiti ) 
• Donated organic produce from the Parish Sustainable Garden to Perry Nursery School 

Communication / Education
Educated parishioners with:

• A Common Conference workshop on climate change 
• Presentation to Rel Ed. Confirmation students 
• RCIA presentation 

Shared our learning with the larger community:

• Presented at the annual MI-IPL conference 
• Made two presentations to regional pastors 
• Met with other local parishes for mutual learning/info sharing 

Buildings / Energy Savings 
Partnered with Better Buildings for Michigan:

• Audited the Rectory to identify residential energy savings 
• Gave parishioners discounted-cost home energy audits
• Began exploring the opportunity to obtain solar panels for the St. Francis campus 

Purchasing & Recycling: 
Diverted lots of garbage from the landfill by: 

• Using “real” dishes to feed hundreds of people at our Lenten Friday fish fries and Martin Luther King Jr. supper 
• Using recyclable/ compostable donation sacks during Lent 
• Nearly filling a Habitat for Humanity ReStore truck with donated re-usable items
• Using compostable dishes at the school’s 60th Anniversary party 
• Switching from Styrofoam to compostable cups for coffee and donuts—the church has purchased over 9,000 compostable cups since we made this change! (While not all cups are being composted, we stopped using petroleum-based cups and eliminated any health risks associated with the use of polystyrene.) 

Land & Water / Food

• Took a parish field trip to an organic farm 
• Improved the Sustainable Garden and created a new Michigan Native Plant Garden, with the goal of harvesting the seeds for future sales