LiveSimply

St Francis Church is applying for the CAFOD LiveSimply Award. We are making a commitment to:

• live simply
• live sustainably with creation
• live in solidarity with the poor

If you want to find out more, visit the CAFOD website.

Here is our action plan.

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We have revised the St Francis Covenant with the Poor.

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Theme for May: Nature Friendly Gardens

Grow Wildlife-Friendly Flowers
A wildflower meadow will create a lively feeding
and nesting ground for insects, birds and small animals.

Mow Your Lawn Less
Leaving grass to grow saves you more time, creates a mini jungle for insects to roam and allows invertebrates to shelter and breed, providing food for birds.

Build A Nestbox 
You can give birds a safe place to rest and raise a family by building them a cosy nestbox.

Feed The Birds
Keep tables and hanging feeders topped up with calorie-rich supplies like fat balls, peanuts and sunflower hearts to help them replenish the energy they need to keep warm. 

Build A Mini Pond 
It’s easy to create a small pond out of an old washing up bowl.   As well as attracting aquatic creatures, you might even see a bird having a bath.

Build an Insect Hotel 
Create a home for insects and provide hidey-holes for creatures galore.   An insect hotel can provide a safe hideaway for wildlife and make use of your garden waste.

Reducing Bird Numbers
Since the 1960s, more than 30 million birds have vanished from UK skies.
Birds play a vital role in the natural world but also give us flashes of wonder with their colour, their energy and their song.
A combination of urbanisation, industrial-scale farming, climate change and new diseases are devastating the habitats and food sources that many birds rely on. 

House Sparrows
They’ve lived alongside humans for thousands of years, but house sparrows are a lot rarer than they used to be.
Since 1970, almost 30 million house sparrows have vanished from the UK, and they’re now on the UK Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern.
They’re doing particularly badly in cities but are one of the birds which really benefit from nature-friendly urban-gardening.
The RSPB focuses on sharing information about nest boxes, planting wildflowers, and letting areas of your garden grow wild to try and encourage more people to create space for birds like house sparrows.

Swifts
Small yet mighty, swifts make one of nature’s most incredible journeys, each year flying from the savannahs and forests of Africa to the towns and cities of the UK, and back again – a round trip of at least 14,000 miles.
But now after coming all that way – eating, mating and even sleeping on the wing – too many of these birds find nowhere to nest.
When older buildings are renovated or knocked down, nesting sites in their eaves or under roof tiles, which may have been used by generations of birds, disappear.
New buildings seldom provide alternative nest sites for them. 
Swift populations are plummeting, and they’re on the UK’s Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern. For every ten swifts zooming across our roof tops in 1995, there are only about three now. Time to stand up for Swifts.

Freshwater Wildlife
Our freshwater streams, ponds, wetlands, lakes, rivers and ditches create a network that supports freshwater wildlife which is essential for our own wellbeing. But there has been a long decline of freshwater biodiversity and these habitats have never faced greater threats.

Our Insects Are In Trouble
In the UK, our insect populations have suffered drastic declines, which are set to have far-reaching consequences for both wildlife and people. 
With a third of our food crops pollinated by insects, and as many as 87% of our plants pollinated by animals (and in the majority by insects) there is a lot to lose.
Much of our wildlife, be it birds, bats, reptiles, amphibians, small mammals or fish, rely on insects for food.
Without insects, we risk the collapse of our natural world.
A report, Insect Declines and Why They Matter, published in November 2019 by an alliance of Wildlife Trusts in the south-west, brought together evidence that showed the loss of 50% or more of our insects since 1970, and the shocking reality that 41% of the Earth’s remaining five million insect species are now ‘threatened with extinction’.

We Remember Pope Francis’ Prayer For Our Earth

All powerful God,
you are present in the universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour out upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.
Fill us with your peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one…
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognize that we are profoundly united
with every creature
as we journey towards your infinite light.

Further Information…
www.wildlifetrusts.org
www.rspb.org.uk
www.freshwaterhabitats.org.uk

Theme for April: MONEY

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also [Luke 12:34]

Once the economy loses its human face, then we are no longer served by money, but ourselves become servants of money. This is a form of idolatry against which we are called to react by re-establishing the rational order of things, which appeals to the common good, whereby ‘money must serve, not rule’. [Pope Francis]

Taking a closer look at our financial decisions can be challenging, but acting justly with money is an important part of discipleship.

BANKING

Banks play an important role in the economy. They keep our money safe and they lend to individuals and businesses. Where we bank has an impact. What do you know about your bank’s values and policies? Is it putting your money to work for positive change?

Here are two ethical issues to consider:

Banks and the Climate Crisis

Since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the world’s largest banks have poured US$6.9 trillion into the fossil fuel industry. Is your bank financing fossil fuel expansion?

Fairer Banking

Millions of people in the UK struggle to access the financial services they need to  thrive. What is your bank doing to tackle financial exclusion?             

There are banks, and ethical alternatives like building societies and credit unions, that are shaping a fairer, greener world. Pressure from customers, campaigners and investors can change the banking sector for the better.

PENSIONS

If you have a pension, it’s likely that your money is being invested in companies that are having an impact on the world. Your pension could be financing oil and gas expansion, nuclear weapons or deforestation.

INVESTING

Christian principles shaped some of the earliest examples of ethical investing, as individuals and institutions sought to live out their values by avoiding investing in alcohol, gambling or weapons.

Today, there are lots of ways you can invest for positive impact. Whether you have £10 or £10,000 to invest, you can help people and planet flourish.

OTHER RESOURCES

Consider switching your current account to a greener bank with the Big Bank Switch.

https://laudatosimovement.org/news/join-the-big-bank-switch-campaign-this-lent

Learn more about your pension at https://shareaction.org/savers-resource-hub/pension-power-what-world-is-our-money-building

Take the Bridging the Gap Quiz at https://justmoney.org.uk/money-makes-change-hub/

Learn more about investments at https://justmoney.org.uk/money-makes-change-hub/investing/

PLEDGES

1. Pledge to set aside some time this week to reflect on your choice of bank.
2. What steps could you take to bank more ethically? Pledge to take one or more of these steps.
3. Find out how your pension is invested.

Theme for March: Eat Less Meat (And add a Tin of Lentils to Your Meals Instead)

Approximately 14.5% of of global climate changing gases are due to meat and dairy production (more than all forms of transport!) Cattle (beef, milk) are responsible for about two-thirds of that total (cows produce methane). Moreover, meat-heavy diets are linked to heart disease, strokes and some cancers. [https://friendsoftheearth.uk/food, https://friendsoftheearth.uk/sustainable-living/16-things-you-need-know-about-food-and-environment ]

So, eating less meat – especially beef – will benefit the environment and reduce your risk of some serious health problems.

How to Eat Less Meat

1. Explore vegetarian recipes.
2. Use meat as a flavour enhancer only.
3. Use meat alternatives like tofu, tempeh, veggie mince, beans or lentils to reduce the amount of meat in a meal.
4. Try:
   • tofu in a stir fry with vegetables
   • veggie mince in a pasta sauce
   • lentils in a shepherds pie
   • soya chunks in a curry

Best Meat Alternatives

• Tofu

• Black beans

• Chickpeas

• Lentils

NB Soya and quorn products are often highly processed and high in salt and fat.

Find recipes at:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/vegetarian-dinner-recipes

https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetarian

https://www.deliciouslyella.com/collection/recipes/all-recipes

https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/special-diets/vegetarian-recipes.html

Pledges

• Pledge to eat less meat (especially beef) in your diet, go meatless once or twice a week.

• Pledge to try meat alternatives.

• Put a tin of lentils in your shopping and take the plunge!

Theme for February: Foodbanks

Theme for January: Recycling

Why Recycle?

Some thoughts from Friends of the Earth [https://friendsoftheearth.uk/sustainable-living/7-benefits-recycling]:

The world’s natural resources are finite, and some are in very short supply.

At a basic level:

• Recycling paper and wood saves trees and forests. You can plant new trees, but you can’t replace virgin rainforest or ancient woodlands once they’re lost. 
• Recycling plastic means creating less new plastic, which is usually made from fossil fuel hydrocarbons, so less fossil fuel use.
• Recycling metals means there’s less need for risky, expensive and damaging mining and extraction of new metal ores.
• Recycling glass reduces the need to use new raw materials like sand – supplies of some types of sand are starting to get low around the world.

Also

Making products from recycled materials requires less energy than making them from new raw materials. Sometimes it’s a huge difference in energy. For example:

• Producing new aluminium from old products (including recycled cans and foil) uses 95% less energy than making it from scratch. For steel it’s about a 70% energy saving.
• Making paper from pulped recycled paper uses 40% less energy than making it from virgin wood fibres. 
• The amount of energy saved from recycling one glass bottle could power an old 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours and a new low-energy LED equivalent for a lot longer.

Where can you recycle items that aren’t routinely collected?

Some suggestions

Dental Care Products –   Sandygate Dental Surgery on Sandygate Road [Scheme ends 17th February!]
Old Spectacles –  Alex Gage Opticians in Crosspool / David Inman Opticians in Banner Cross
Printer Ink Cartridges –   Barnardo’s shop in Broomhill; Broomhill Library
Ballpoint Pens –               Good Taste in Broomhill Scheme suspended!
Batteries –   Williamson Hardware in Broomhill
[also many supermarkets including Boots]
WEEE [=Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment]
– Aspire [https://aspire-sheffield.co.uk/]

You might also try:

https://www.recyclenow.com/recycling-locator

https://www.recycle-more.co.uk

for more information on local recycling.

Final thought: The popular slogan “reduce, reuse and recycle” promotes circular economy practices, which are vital when it comes to managing our waste. While recycling is a player, we need a concerted team effort to reduce our waste. We need to reuse more and reduce what we purchase to truly be managing our waste in the best possible way. [https://friendsoftheearth.uk/sustainable-living/trick-or-treat-can-you-guess-which-climate-actions-are-worth-hype]

Recycling Sunday
at St. Francis of Assisi church on
26th January 2025
We will be collecting the following items for recycling:
Old Spectacles
Plastic Dental Hygiene tools – manual toothbrushes and
electric toothbrush heads and covers and
empty dental floss containers
[NO toothpaste tubes please]
Used up Ballpoint Pens
Empty Printer Ink Cartridges
Please put these items to one side and bring them to Mass on the day

Theme for December: CAFOD World Gifts

This Advent, St Francis is raising funds for farming related CAFOD World Gifts. Farming is often the only means of survival for people living in poverty. But, for many poor climate. lack of equipment, or no training makes even just growing enough food to survive impossible. The World Gifts Farming fund provides people in the developing world with aid for essential skills to provide for themselves for the long term- from farming the land and rearing animals to starting a small scale business. By buying a World Gift in this fund you make a world of difference to many communities, especially rural areas.

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To find out more about CAFOD World Gifts visit the CAFOD website: https://worldgifts.cafod.org.uk/

Theme for November: Have a Merry, Sustainable Christmas

WRAPPING YOUR PRESENTS

FOOD AT CHRISTMAS

MAYBE A GREEN GIFT

MORE ABOUT PRESENTS!

For other great ideas try:

https://www.soilassociation.org/take-action/organic-living/christmas/sustainable-christmas-guide

https://www.wwf.org.uk/top-tips-sustainable-christmas

Theme for October: Grow and Harvest your own Vegetables

Growing your own fruit and veg is a great way to live more sustainably.

It reduces food miles –

The average food product travels over 1,500 miles before it is eaten but produce grown at the bottom of your garden will have ventured no distance at all.

It reduces waste –

Only 1/3 of the UK’s plastic food packaging is recycled but anything that you grow yourself will be entirely zero waste so you won’t need to worry about your plastic footprint anymore.

It supports local wildlife – growing your own produce organically will support local biodiversity by encouraging insects, bees and butterflies to visit your garden and pollinate your plants.

Have a look at BBC Gardeners World Website:

www.gardenersworld.com/grow-vegetables/

and follow the links to various kinds that you can grow.

Growing your own food is  very satisfying, it is  good for the environment as it saves on food miles, as well as having a positive effect on both physical and mental health. It is also much cheaper.

Wonky veg is your friend!

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Launch Event

We held our launch event on 28 April. We shared our ideas with the parish and invited people to join us.

And here are some of our pledges so far:

On 9 June 2024 parishioners planted a wildlife garden.

Parish Purchasing Policy

St Francis of Assisi Purchasing Policy

The Church of St Francis of Assisi acknowledges that all purchasing decisions carry environmental, social and economic implications and recognises its duty to purchase goods in a responsible manner.  In keeping with the spirit of ‘Laudato Si’, The Church of St Francis of Assisi will encourage the purchase of products from sustainable, renewable, or recycled resources, the use of Fairtrade / ethically sourced products and the use of products which have minimised environmental impact from their production through to their use and disposal.

The specific examples in this policy are as follows:

1. Paper Products

                Wherever possible, all paper products used in The Church of St Francis of Assisi will be produced from recycled paper. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Kitchen Roll
• Toilet Roll
• Printer Paper

2. Cleaning Products

               Wherever possible, all cleaning products used in The Church of St Francis of Assisi will be of the type deemed to minimise their environmental impact. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Hand Soap
• Washing up Liquid
• Dishwasher Tablets
• Toilet Cleaner
• General Surface Cleaner

3. Food and Drink

               Wherever possible, all foodstuffs used in The Church of St Francis of Assisi will be from Fairtrade sources. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Tea
• Coffee
• Sugar

The policy will be reviewed annually or as required.

Theme for September: Recycling

September is the Season of Creation, a month-long celebration where the world’s 2.2 billion Christians come together to renew their relationship with our Creator and all creation through celebration, conversion, and commitment to care for our common home. It starts with a Day of Prayer for Creation on 1st September and ends on 4th October, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology.

Caring for Creation has many facets, one of them surely being considerate and respectful when using Earth’s limited resources.

Natural resources like energy, water, land use, minerals, trees, etc. are used in the production of every single item we buy. Some of these processes are very energy intensive or produce harmful by-products. And a lot of the finished products don’t biodegrade easily and are used for a very limited time – some only for as long as it takes to eat or drink the contents – before they make their way to an incinerator, into landfill, or in the worst case into nature and waterways where they some of them can linger for centuries while causing problems to fellow creatures.

Currently, humanity is using nature 1.7 times faster than our planet can regenerate.  That’s equivalent to using the resources of 1.7 Earths.  And if everyone on Earth lived like the average UK citizen we would need 2.6 Earths. (for comparison: USA 5.1 Earths, India 0.8 Earths)

Natural resources like energy, water, land use, minerals, trees, etc.  are used in the production of every single item we buy. Some of these processes are very energy intensive or produce harmful by-products. And a lot of the finished products don’t biodegrade easily and are used for a very limited time – some only for as long as it takes to eat or drink the contents – before they make their way to an incinerator, into landfill, or in the worst case into nature and waterways where they some of them can linger for centuries while causing problems to fellow creatures.

In an ideal world there would be no waste.  At the end of its life-time everything would become a resource for something else – as it has worked in nature for millennia. Considering the number of people on the planet some waste is probably unavoidable but a huge amount of natural resources could be saved if we re-imagined more of our waste not as the end of the line but as resource for something new. This is where recycling comes in as an integral part of a circular economy.

Most of us will have heard of the 3Rs: Reduce  Reuse  Recycle. Some add Repair, Repurpose, and others to the list. Of these recycling should always be the last resort before throwing something in the waste bin as the other actions have an even larger potential for saving natural resources.

In 2021 46% of municipal waste was recycled in the UK. The charity WRAP estimates that in the period from 2018 to 2025 up to 5mt CO2e may be avoided by current UK recycling rates. There are plans for more recycling to happen. For example, an automated Deposit Return Schemes for bottles and drinks cans in supermarkets will probably be rolled out in 2027. These schemes have been working well in other European countries for many years and have massively increased recycling rates.

What we are doing as a parish

• A new purchasing policy is in place to buy recycled paper products such as printer paper, kitchen roll, and toilet roll. The new 100% recycled, unbleached toilet rolls in use at the moment are from Naked Sprout, one of Ethical Consumer’s Best Buys.
• We ask kitchen users to take home all packaging that is can be recycled at home
• There will be several Recycling Sundays a year at church where we will collect specific items that are not widely recycled:

What we can do as individuals

• Consider the other ‘Rs’ and donating to a charity before putting something in the recycling bin
• Buy recycled products
• Take any soft, scrunchable plastic foil and netting (but not biodegradable plastic!) to collection points in supermarkets. More and more supermarkets are offering this, the Co-op having been the first
• Let us know of recycling facilities like Terracycle collection points so we can share this information with the parish. Good Taste in Broomhill, for example, collects printer cartridges and used up ball pens for recycling via Terracycle.
• Join in the Season of Creation and support St Francis’ Recycling Sunday
• Have a look at the links below

Resources

Home Landing EN 2024

https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need

Here you can find out how many Earths would be needed if everyone lived like you personally:  https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en

https://www.wrap.ngo/ and  https://www.recyclenow.com/ have lots of information on recycling

https://www.aspire-sheffield.co.uk/ Aspire is a community entreprise that creates opportunities for vulnerable and socially excluded people. They refurbish, repair or recycle many goods including small electric appliances and computers.

https://uk.freecycle.org

https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB/#@54.39586446195522:-2.83447377734376zoom:5

Theme for August : Take Time to Appreciate God’s Creation.

As summer blooms and holidays beckon, take a bit of time to appreciate the natural world and the immensity of the Universe. Look up and look outwards.

Look out on a clear night at he moon, planets and stars.

In the words of the Hymn

“Oh Lord my God when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hand has made”.

Picture of Aurora.

Take a walk, or sit in the Garden. Have a peak at the wildflower patch in the Church Garden

Can you spot the cheeky baby Robin who was eating the seeds as we scattered them

Picture Wildflower patch and of the camouflaged baby robin.

Go and look for water voles in the conduit next to Redmire’s reservoirs.

Look for Curlew, Lapwings and Larks up on the moors.

Thank God for the water that sustains us. For the plants striving upwards powered by the sun.

Picture Redmire’s Reservoirs

Matthew 6:28-30

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow? They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed as one of these.

Picture teasel looking towards Rivelin

Take a moment to thank God for the Glory of creation.

What can you do to help creation flourish?

1. Join the litter picks in Crosspool or Lodge Moor.
2. Let the grass grow, so wildflowers can seed and help plant and insect diversity.
3. Plant flowers that encourage butterflies and bees.
4. Have a wild corner in your garden, or a compost heap, so garden waste becomes soil.
5. Make a home for our fellow creatures, A bird box, a bee or insect hotel. A bat box?
6. Make a hedgehog hole to allow them to move about.
7. Feed the birds or give them a bird bath to bath and drink.
8. Water our wildflower patch with the children after mass.