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.


We have revised the St Francis Covenant with the Poor.

Theme for February: Foodbanks

A foodbank is a non-profit, charitable organisation that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger.

Some foodbanks are run by the Trussell Trust and some are independently run.

In 2022-2023, 2.3 million people in the UK lived in a household that used a foodbank at least once in 12 months.1

There has been an increase of 94% in foodbank usage over the past five years, according to the Trussell Trust.2

In 2023-2024 the Trussell Trust provided 1.1 million emergency food parcels for children.2

S2 Foodbank is located at St Swithun’s Church on Cary Road. It is an independently run foodbank. People can refer themselves or be referred by a professional (ie. GP, social worker or similar).

S2 Foodbank provides people with a range of dried and tinned food as well as a small selection of fresh food, personal hygiene products and other items such as washing powder.

S2 Foodbank provides emergency food parcels for an initial 4 weeks. Food parcels can be provided for another 8 weeks if the recipient agrees to work with the S2 staff on debt management. S2 Foodclub provides longer term support. Members have access to a wide range of food, including fresh food, for a small fee for up to 26 weeks.

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 Broomhill and Banner Cross
Printer Ink Cartridges –   Barnardo’s shop in Broomhill
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 toolsmanual 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.


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

Be creative with your wrapping – maybe brown paper or old magazines, tied with ribbon, wool or jute garden twine. Don’t buy paper with glitter on or silver or gold embossing as it can’t be recycled. Try furoshiki, the Japanese art of wrapping presents in beautiful bits of fabric

  • How much do you really need? do a plan to avoid wasting food
  • Be creative with leftovers – think turkey shepherd’s pie or curry, green veg and stilton soup, poached satsumas, roast vegetable soup
  • Buy locally produced meat (eg Whirlow Farm, an amazing charity)

Get a local organic veg box (Beanie’s, Regather, Barra Organics)

The tree – could it be

  • in a pot so it can be reused?
  • a big bunch of twigs found in the woods, maybe painted?
  • a reusable artificial one?
  • one with LED lights on, to reduce electricity consumption?

Decorations – could they be

  • old school, such as paper chains which could be made from old magazines
  • home made crackers, filled with little gifts or home made chocolates, and of course your own jokes!

Think vintage or second hand – hunt through eBay, Vinted, or try Oxfam Vintage online

Think of other communities – buy a gift for the developing world from a charity like Ripple Effect, maybe a cow, a beehive, a garden or a bike

Make something

  • Food and drink: truffles, Florentines, sloe gin, limoncello
  • Crafts: make a bird box, paint a smooth stone for a paperweight, knit a tea cosy or a pair of gloves

What about a ‘green gift’ to benefit the environment

  • A bird box or a bug hotel (RSPB)
  • A shrub or plant that will attract pollinators (RHS, Sarah Raven, Crocus)
  • Wildflower seeds to make the bees happy (Pictorial Meadows)
  • Adopt an animal through the World Wildlife Trust

What about an ‘experience’?

  • A ticket to a more unusual sport such as basketball or ice hockey, or for a play or a film
  • Membership of a body like the National Trust, the RHS, Chatsworth, or a season ticket for someone like Hallam FC

Give of your time – make a voucher for something like breakfast in bed, washing up for a week, going out for a walk with a packed lunch, afternoon tea – you could even make up a book of vouchers!

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!

Recycling Sunday
at St. Francis of Assisi church on
22nd September 2024
We will be collecting the following items for recycling:
Small dead batteries
Used up ballpens
Empty printer ink cartridges
Please put these items to one side and bring them to Mass on the day

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

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.