Eco Church
Eco Church is A Rocha UK’s award scheme for churches in England and Wales who want to demonstrate that the gospel is good news for God’s earth, and Bedworth Parish is part of it!
We were awarded the prestigious Eco Church Award at Bronze level in 2021. The vision is for the church to care for creation as an integral part of loving our neighbours and following God faithfully. We are now actively working towards our Silver award.

So far, among other things we:

• Do a town litter pick, most months

• Have a large recycling bin

• Have twinned our toilets and taps.

• Send disposable cups to Costa for recycling

• Replaced most of our lights with LEDs

• Added timers to the immersion heaters for water

• Have an annual Lifestyle Audit for our parishioners

• Became a Fairtrade Church and support the annual Fairtrade Fortnight 

• Have reduced our heating use through monitoring and careful scheduling 

• Have arranged for solar panels and battery to be installed

• Are available to speak with other interested churches

• … and many more initiatives!

What can you do?
​Here are some suggestions:

• Carry out a lifestyle audit. Church members please also use our Lifestyle Audit for Bedworth Parish but others might like to think about the same questions. 

• Find out your carbon footprint. Use an environmental footprint calculator, such as the WWF calculator, the Giki Zero app, Climate Hero, or the more thorough Carbon Calculator. 

• Apply the principles Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in your life

• Consider how you travel, especially how you get to church. Could you walk or share a car with someone? We’d like to encourage people to get to church more sustainably. 

There are more ideas and information on the Eco Church website. Eco Church is supported by A Rocha, Christian Aid, Tear Fund, The Church of England and the Methodist Church.
​If you would like to get more involved, please contact Chris Rigden via eco@bedworthparish.org.

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​Fairtrade Church

We are a Fairtrade church. We have committed to:

• use Fairtrade tea and coffee for all meetings for which we have responsibility;

• move forward on using other Fairtrade products;

• promote Fairtrade during Fairtrade fortnight and through other activities where possible.

What is Fairtrade?
Fairtrade is a system that ensures better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. The Fairtrade Foundation certifies products where companies pay locally negotiated fair and sustainable minimum prices, and meet social, economic and environmental standards. In addition to a minimum price (paid if the market price is lower), a further premium is invested in social, environmental and economic developmental projects, decided upon democratically by a committee of producers or workers. There must also be continuous improvements to develop farmers’ organisations or workers’ situations.

Why Fairtrade?
Conventional trade generally discriminates against the poorest, weakest producers. These producers may have poor access to markets and limited information about prices and market needs, so they often get very low prices. Fairtrade gives a better price as well as a premium to help an organisation or community grow. Fairtrade organisations also give training and market research advice to help producers develop and sell new Fairtrade products – and invest in opportunities to start Fairtrade for new products and new producers.
Fairtrade products have to meet minimum conditions for workers. Buying Fairtrade chocolate is important, for example, because some cocoa farmers use forced child labour in cocoa production. Fairtrade cocoa producers are strictly monitored on this – so if you want to ensure that your chocolate treats are not encouraging child slavery, buy Fairtrade chocolate!

​For more information about Fairtrade see http://www.fairtrade.org.uk