Other parishes are on the green bandwagon, too, including those holding bicycle drives – another solution to keeping piles of material out of landfills.
A Knights of Columbus arm of the Catholic Community of St. Francis Xavier, Hunt Valley, held a used bicycle drive after Masses during the weekend of Aug. 16-17. The bikes were refurbished and donated to inner-city parishes, including St. Francis Xavier’s sister parish, St. Gregory the Great. The parish also began paper recycling recently, also with Abitibi.
St. Lawrence Martyr, Jessup, has two recycle bins for newspapers, which are doing very well.
“Parishioners,” said Kathy Glass, secretary, “are just so great about bringing their newspapers.”
The parish has earned more than $700 in one year from Abitibi, and was also awarded $200 for winning an Abitibi contest.
Like St. Casimir, the parish has replaced light bulbs with energy efficient ones, insulated the parish center and installed programmable thermostats.
As a whole, the archdiocese has plans to turn greener and stay on a path of conservation. The facilities and real estate division is in the process of forming a green council, already supported by Bishops Mitchell T. Rozanski, eastern vicar, and Denis J. Madden, urban vicar, who will serve on it, along with priest representatives from various parishes.
Nolan McCoy, the division’s director, wants to be the first green archdiocese in the United States.
“It is each parish and school’s responsibility to take care of the earth we have been entrusted with,” he said. “We should all have a goal to reduce the amount of resources we consume while fulfilling our ministries. That includes energy, water and materials we put out to landfills. Anything we can do to save a single kilowatt will be for the benefit of the archdiocese.”
The first step is to establish a baseline of the archdiocese’s performance in its 16 million square feet of space and several thousand buildings.
“To know if you’re getting better,” said Mr. McCoy, “you have to know how you’re performing.”
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Parishes and schools will be visited so as to identify kilowatt consumption used per square foot – who has the best practices and who is using the most energy.
“We can help them put technologies into place,” said Mr. McCoy. “It’s our moral obligation, our responsibility, to protect the earth for future generations.”
Printed with permission of The Catholic Review, newspaper for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Maryland.