Past and Ongoing Green Team Action Plans and Initiatives

Environmental Film Festival Collaboration with ECO

UUFH collaborated with ECO (Environmental Conservation Organization) in hosting  the 2013 and 2014 ECO Film Festivals that offered films on topics designed to educate, advocate, and inspire the participants to be more aware of the issues affecting the health of our mountains and the world beyond. UUFH members helped by providing and selling refreshments and by attending the film. The 2013 film, ‘Your Environmental Road Trip’, was promoted in the newsletter, order of service, and eblasts with about 70 people in attendance. The 2014 film, Chasing Ice, was also promoted in the local newspaper as well as the internal communications mentioned above. There were about 80 people including many UUs in attendance and UUs provided the snacks and manned the snack bar that evening.

In August, 2014, ECO offered a Green Home Tour that UU members helped organize and many participated in by helping at the various homes and taking the tour. The self-driving tour was a fund-raiser for ECO that showcased multiple aspects of sustainability through edible gardens, permaculture, water management, renewable energy and reuse of materials.

In May, 2016 UUFH board voted to became partners with Creation Care Alliance of Western North Carolina, a network of congregations who have united around a moral and spiritual call to preserve the integrity, beauty, and health of our beautiful mountains. This organization is a program of Mountain True, environmental organization (formerly ECO).

Pesticide Education, Abatement and protection for Migrant Workers

This project involved working with the Henderson County Migrant Education Program and the Blue Ridge Health Services Outreach Program too provide protective equipment and educational materials to farm workers and their dependents for their use in the fields.

Packets of gloves, hats, sun glasses, and a comic book teaching about the harmful effects of the sun’s rays and pesticides were assembled by children and parents. The County Migrant Education Program offered clinics for farm workers to teach them about the harmful effects of the sun’s rays and pesticides. Some of the workers themselves helped with the training. Items were distributed to all workers and they were encouraged to use them when they worked in the fields.

Celebrating Green through Worship

Through readings, music, children’s stories, and other elements of the Sunday service, environmental issues and concerns were included in a portion of many of the services.

Earth Day was celebrated each of the three years through readings, activities, and announcements of Earth Day celebrations in the community. April 2015, Jim McKinley spoke on “Earthy Hope” and Jan Partin added her reflections.

In addition, guest speakers were invited to speak specifically about green issues: February 2014, Ron Chapman spoke on “On Sacred Ground” and then conducted an interactive workshop “Healing the Earth” that evening in Fellowship Hall. In January 2015, Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring for the National Climate Data Center in Asheville spoke on “Climate Change: Beyond the Science, Perspectives from a Climate Scientist”. July 3, 2016, Thomas Crowe, spoke on “Loving Where You Live, and Rev. Scott Hardin-Nieri, director of Creation Care Alliance for Mountain True, environmental organization spoke on July 24, 2016.

Peace/Contemplation Garden

The Contemplation Garden, aka the Peace Garden, was truly a cooperative project involving members of the congregation, parents, children, and youth. The design was the creative idea of the RE director and the youth with help from the Green Team. The garden, located in a private area of the campus, consists of a meandering path of colorful pavers painted by the children, a Zen garden complete with sand, rock border, and bamboo screen; solar bird bath, wooden sitting bench, peace pole with the word peace in four languages: English, Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic, and native plantings. The overall effect is one of peaceful serenity, surrounded by nature.

Multigenerational Workday at Holmes Educational State Forest

Holmes Educational State Forest is a 235-acre state forest, located in Henderson County, North Carolina. It is near the much larger DuPont State Recreational Forest, which is responsible for its management. The forest is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and it has rugged terrain with a mixture of hardwood forest, rhododendron, and flame azalea.

The forest’s primary purpose is education and promotion of forest resources. Forest rangers regularly conduct outdoor classes for schools and other groups from spring to fall. The forest also has self-guided interpretive trails, which teach visitors about forestry using trail-side exhibits, displays and audio boxes. In addition, the forest offers a small network of hiking trails, a picnic area with a shelter and a group campground.

Our youth, several adults and even a few children worked for a day in the forest under the direction of Amy Kinsella – Park Ranger doing several tasks that she outlined.

Tasks accomplished on that day:

• Weeded two large gardens
• Planted flower seeds in these gardens
• Broke down lots of big tree branches, distributed some of the branched back into the woods (per Ranger Amy’s directions) and burned the rest in the fireplace at the picnic shelter.
• Distributed mulch to areas in need throughout the gardens.
• Transported large rocks from forest areas to visitor walking paths to serve as border markers.
• Cleared debris and generally tried to beautify the areas of the campus that are most frequented by visitors.
• There was a short segment of animal education, such as when a large salamander was discovered, plus lots of good tutelage from Ranger Amy concerning general forestry matters and conservation.

Wildlife Habitat

The Landscape committee and the RE Youth of the congregation under the guidance of Green Team member Bonnie Arbuckle worked to achieve the designation of Wildlife Habitat on our campus. The RE Youth built bird nesting boxes and installed them on the grounds. They planted and grew butterfly host plants and flowers that attract pollinators and added them to our gardens. The Landscape committee worked to remove invasive, nonnative plants and added native trees and shrubs that now provide food and shelter. They distributed mason bee houses and requested that no pesticides be used on the lawn, so the birds can find insects to feed their young.

A birdbath was installed near the church office to provide drinking/bathing water for the birds.

Greening Our Policies

The Green Team began looking at green policies in 2014 and asked for input from the congregation, both initially, and then after we had formulated several green policies. We conducted forums and asked for comments through the Beacon newsletter. We received many constructive comments from members and the board that we incorporated into the policies.

We met with housekeeping, landscaping, and facilities committees to encourage them to use environmentally preferable products and services.

Let the Sunshine In: Solar Energy Project

For ten years, discussions about installing solar panels on the fellowship roof started and stopped several times. The Green Sanctuary Initiative enabled the UUFH Green Team to move forward with what was our largest project. Titled “Let the Sunshine In, “the project moved through several phases. First the board was presented with a technical description, cost estimate, and fund raising plan

Several Forums were designed to inform members and friends of the goals for solar panels including the $40,000 cost of installation, tax benefits to contributors, environmental impact and witness, and aesthetic aspects.  These educational and interactive meetings ended with an opportunity to show support with a dollar amount.  The first meeting was with major donors who indicated support at a $25,000 level. Additional meetings raised the financial support to $35,000.  The board then approved the project and collection of funds was begun.  This process was started in July and all funds were collected by December 2015   Pledges were made and fulfilled by over 100 individuals and families.

We selected Haynes Energy Solutions to do the installation after interviewing several companies.  The panels were installed in December 2015 and fully operational. The hookup to Duke Energy took several more weeks and a monitor was installed that showed real-time production of electricity.  Reverend Jim McKinley officially flipped the switch to celebrate our use of solar energy at a Sunday morning service in April 2016. ‘Click’ here to see our usage and graphs.

Better Health, Better World

This was an effort to introduce the concept of living green and eating green. Articles in the Beacon Newsletter focused from time to time on eating tips. Sunday, October 27, 2013, Fran and Bob German offered an evening of “Healthy Eating Lifestyle” Workshop. A vegan potluck was followed by a program on simple ideas on how to transition to a healthful and delicious plant-based lifestyle. The RE helped coordinate a healthy food donation program in partnership with IAM. The food drive lasted 4 months and each month focused on a different category of healthy food that they invited the congregation to donate. They collected over 500 pounds of healthy food for the IAM Food Pantry.

Year-Round Gardening

A member of the Green Team organized this project which took place over a two-year period from 2013-2014.  Through blurbs in the newsletter, e-blasts, and announcements on Sunday morning, he located several individuals who liked to garden, but didn’t have adequate space or lacked proper sun or soil conditions. At the same time, he located others that had the space and proper conditions, but lacked the interest, or perhaps could no longer properly tend to a garden. This project brought individuals together in a way that created a win-win situation for both. It provided an opportunity for individuals to engage in wholesome outdoor activity while growing some of their food in a collaborative Fellowship garden.

Rich was able to enlist several gardens and gardeners for his project. There was not as much interest as he had hoped, but those that participated, found it to be a rewarding experience.  One garden, planted in an abandoned raised bed, was planted with tomatoes, potatoes and green beans.  Another was planted on newly cleared land, so yields were low the first year.  Asparagus continues to grow this year and the garden has been more productive with soil enhancements.

Build awareness of the significance and complexity of environmental issues

UUFH has a history of being environmentally friendly. Most, if not all of our members and friends have been aware of our 7^th Principle- “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part”. However, I don’t think we gave environmental issues much thought beyond our acceptance of that principle. Our effort over the past 3 years has been to emphasize the urgency in changing our habits as a congregation and as individuals, and to demonstrate ways that we can make a difference.

Encourage personal lifestyle changes

Through our sustainability projects, we have asked congregational members and friends to participate in ways that would challenge their thinking and doing. Through our introduction of Green Policies, we have seen greater participation in recycling, use of green products, and eating habits that eliminate or greatly reduce the amount of meat, especially red meat in our diets. Since the installation of solar panels, members and friends have begun opting for similar changes to their own households.

Monthly columns in the Beacon Newsletter and weekly E blasts offered tips on everything from water conservation, switching to clean energy, building mason bee houses, benefits of using cloth bags as opposed to plastic, replacing light bulbs with LED lights, and encouraging recycling, repurposing, and reusing.

Engage in community action on environmental issues

Several members and friends participated in the biomonitoring training offered by Mountain True, local environmental organization (formerly ECO) to learn about macro-invertebrates as they relate to stream health. And they are now helping to monitor local streams.

Strengthen the connection between spiritual practice and earth consciousness

Several of our worship services address spiritual practice and earth consciousness. In April, 2015, for Earth Day, Minister Jim McKinley and Jan Partin addressed this through the sermon, “Earthy Hope”, The problems all around us seem so big and our individual contributions seem so small, it’s difficult to find and hang on to the realistic hopes we need to live positively and well; to feel good about the commitments we make and to notice and value the joy we experience. This Sunday before Earth Day will give us hope, keep us engaged in the conversation and on the path.  In February 2014, Ron Chapman, guest speaker talked about “Healing the Earth” and in the evening led an interactive workshop to expand an understanding of the cycles that replenish and restore the earth. These are just two examples of services that the Green Team helped to initiate over the past few years.

Work to heal environmental injustice

UUFH’s main project to heal the environment involved pesticide education, abatement and protection for migrant workers and has been a cooperative effort with Henderson County Migrant Education Program and the Blue Ridge Health Services Outreach Program. During the summer months, there is a large population of migrants working in the tomato fields, and then the apple orchards in Henderson County.

This program has helped them become more aware of the benefits of protection from the sun and pesticides as they work in the fields.  UUFH and their partners helped train a cadre of workers through clinics, who in turn reached out to fellow workers with education and protective equipment such as gloves, hats, sunglasses, and comic books in Spanish warning of the hazards of exposure to the sun and pesticides.

Green Moment from the Green Team

Living sustainable just makes good sense. “Putting up food” by canning, freezing, or dehydrating makes good use of extra garden produce that we simply can’t eat all at once. By storing up food for the long winter months, you are better-prepared should markets run out of items (especially during winter storms). You also save gas, money, and time because you don’t have to go to the store as often, and don’t waste food. Besides that, it’s just a great experience planning and preparing for your own subsistence. The garden produce you don’t eat or store also can be used for soil enrichment if you add them to a compost pile.

Composting is also a great sustainable action. If you still have leaves, they can be raked and shredded, mulched, then layered with soil, grass clippings, vegetable scraps. In the spring, you can nourish your flowers and vegetable gardens with the “composted soil” created from last year’s waste.