Living up to our Statement on Environmental Sustainability

Yearly Meeting issued a Statement on Environmental Sustainability in 2000. Since then much has changed in the world and the issue of climate change looms large over us all yet little action appears to be taking place.

Changing our habits to live up to the Sustainability Statement has been very much left to individuals rather than being embraced collectively by our worshipping communities. Despite having ownership and responsibility for a substantial number of buildings and annually holding events in many others we have no practical guidelines as to how we can best fulfil the expectations laid out in the statement.

At the Young Friends Camp Easter 2007 a group gathered to discuss climate change and environmental sustainability, within Quakers and our wider communities. Focusing on our Camp’s own ‘carbon footprint’ as an example of the negative environmental impact our activities have, we were moved to formulate action to help change our unsustainable practices. We produced guidelines on Sustainability for the organisation and planning of future Young Friends camps and events. This Camp has been ‘carbon neutralised’ as best we could both by offsetting our carbon footprint through financial donation (www.carbonzero.co.nz) and making a concerted effort to reduce our footprint initially, especially with regard to transport.

We are concerned about the lack of consistent corporate sustainable practice within the Quaker community. ‘Green housekeeping’ of our buildings is often left to individuals to take on board and no guidelines are in place for those unfamiliar with what might be possible. Events committees are left each time to consider (or not) the environmental impact surrounding the organisation, programme and transport and how that might be addressed.

We believe that Yearly Meeting should lead the way by asking all the MMs and gathering organising committees to fulfil certain obligations and give space for discussion of this at Yearly Meeting. This is not something that can be fixed overnight so we hope that it would be an ongoing concern and not something that comes up once and then forgotten about.

Many of our buildings are used by non-Quaker groups – our buildings can be seen as representative of our views and beliefs. By use of green housekeeping products etc we not only help the environment but outwardly show our commitment to others. We would like YM to either find a way forward to produce a YM policy on green housekeeping or ask MMs to establish their own. This would be an ongoing process to be developed over time rather than a static statement. Carbon neutral electricity is now available and we hope that all Meetings would be encouraged to use this and it become standard practice for all Quaker owned buildings.

In our exploration of our carbon footprint we discovered one of the major impacts on the world was the eating of mass produced meat. We ask that events organisors consider how a vegetarian menu would considerably reduce our communal ecological footprint, enabling us to ‘be patterns and examples’ of our statement towards sustainability. Not only would this addresses the ecological footprint but also supports our testimony to simplicity (and reduces the stress for the cooks!).

We have established a working group to investigate the possibility of combining Young Friends Outreach initiatives with the cause of sustainability, to produce practical aids for people to reduce their consumption while simultaneously raising consciousness on climate change and awareness of the values held by the Society of Friends. The convenors of this group are Thomas Owen and Thomas Watts.

We look forward to the opportunity to discussing these issues with those present at Yearly Meeting. If anyone has any particular questions or comments meanwhile they can be sent to the convenors via yf.clerk@quaker.org.nz

(revised version 3!)