St Catherine’s Tranmere achieves Eco Church Silver

This was an all-round team effort of our inner-city parish Eco and Ministry teams.

In section 1 Worship and Teaching our Families Worker, Charlotte, has done great work with 2 local schools and our own children’s groups in teaching them about creation, including visits to our garden.

The wardens, Ron and Sue, have been busy attending to LED lighting, insulation where we can, use of earth friendly chemicals for cleaning etc.

Our garden team, Judy, Jean and others, have planted fruit trees and bushes and strawberries, as well as having 2 compost bins, a stick pile and a bird box as well as over 100 species of plant (Count on Nature 2023) in our very small garden.

In the community we have contributed to mental health benefits by running a drop-in afternoon on Wednesdays and planting several thousand spring bulbs in odd patches of grass in the parish. This year will be our third Great Big Green week in cooperation with the local mosque and schools, trying to get the community on board with climate and biodiversity issues. During the week we have litter picks, clearing grot spots, restoring run down areas of green, running a climate/biodiversity Quiz, a plant share afternoon, a repair café, and an exhibition in the main Birkenhead library in our parish.

As far as lifestyle is concerned there are regular articles in our parish magazine giving tips on reducing our carbon footprint and we have attempted to get everyone to do a carbon footprint assessment which is difficult as many do not have internet access. They also don’t have cars which suggests their carbon footprint is quite low. Overall a great team effort.