Last summer, Eco Church team member Polly attended her nephew’s wedding at St Nicholas Church, Wasing. Guests were asked not to bring conventional confetti in line with the church’s confetti policy – avoiding glitter, plastic, or paper confetti. Embracing the challenge, Polly turned to the blousy roses in her garden, thankful for a spell of hot sunny days which meant they dried quickly, so she didn’t end up with a pile of mouldy petals! With the encouragement to avoid plastic confetti in place of real rose petals, a conversation around confetti and its impact had begun amongst the wedding guests. Traditional confetti may be small, but its impact is significant. Often made from PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and other plastics, which we know have a lasting environmental impact, it pollutes soil and waterways with microplastics. It can also harm wildlife, as they are attracted to the shiny material and may make nests with it or eat it. By contrast, thoughtful alternatives show how simple choices can protect creation. The little chapel of St Nicholas’ Church, Wasing, achieved their Bronze Eco Church award in 2023, and have not allowed artificial confetti for over fifteen years! As a small, rural church, they only …

Newport Methodist Church, Isle of Wight – Journey to the Bronze Eco Church award.  In 2020 during lockdown, Tearfund’s ‘Reboot’ campaign encouraged one of our small groups, meeting online, to think about building a better post-coronavirus world. An immediate step was to write to the prime minister calling for government action to rebuild in a way that would create a better, fairer and more sustainable world for everyone.  During Lent 2021, we continued online sessions for the wider congregation based on the excellent series Christianity and Climate Change featuring Katherine Hayhoe. The final session was entitled ‘What can we do as church?’.  We registered with Eco Church in 2022. ‘Worship and Teaching’, through the Bible studies we had done together, was the spur for action and continues to be fundamental in our thinking.  The ‘Land and Nature’ criteria were challenging in our urban ‘concrete and gravel’ site! We asked for suggestions via a display set up for several Sundays, and a management plan, ‘People for nature, nature for people‘ was developed. ‘Windowsill growing kits’ (seeds ready planted in pots filled with compost) allowed anyone to join in. Donations of plants and planters and offers of practical help followed, and there …

Adrienne Hughes, Eco-champion at St Michael & All Angels, Flax Bourton, shares some of their Eco Church journey to Gold.  I’m sure you are aware that a successful journey relies on careful planning and the right footwear! When the Flax Bourton Church Team started out on the journey to Eco Church Bronze back in 2022, we did a little planning but mainly wandered about in metaphorical flip-flops, letting a dandelion grow here and there, whilst sipping our Fairtrade coffee and dreaming of a greener church! However, a few months later, with the Bronze award under our belt, we put our best foot forward (in our gardening boots) and started work in the churchyard. Lots of people helped us with this project so that today we have, amongst other things, a bodged bench, herb planters, crab-apple trees, hazel fence and climbing plants. We also added all sorts of homes and feeding places for a host of creatures. Biodiversity surveys indicate an increase in the number of species that can be found in our churchyard, which is great news.  Success with a Silver award in late 2023 inspired us to put on our running shoes and set bigger goals to achieve, such …

Image: Susanne, church secretary, demonstrating how she cycles to church. Some of our recent journey:  “How are you helping the environment?” is the question we posed to our congregation in the summer of 2025.  In the photo above, our Church Secretary, Susanne, is demonstrating that she cycles to church! In an ‘Open Studios’ event, we displayed the twenty-nine photos received from church members and our local residents’ association. Each photo showed a different aspect of helping the environment, ranging from planting bee-friendly shrubs to installing an air source heat pump.  It was fun, and it engaged more people directly than anything else ‘green’ that we have done.   This is just one part of our Eco Church action plan, ‘Exploring Gold’.  We don’t know if we can get there but, having got Bronze and Silver Awards in January and December 2023, we are giving it our best shot.  Our experience is that the Eco Church framework and resources are very helpful tools for identifying effective action to address the climate and biodiversity crises.  Here are just a few of the ideas that we have picked up and acted on so far in 2025/26:  Worship and Teaching – have regular prayers and …

We were encouraged to hear this recent story of two churches supporting each other on their Eco Church journeys. Priory Church of St Mary’s Usk, who are working towards their Gold Eco Church award, paid a visit to St Peter’s Church in Henleaze, Bristol, who achieved Gold in 2024, to see what they could learn. They even travelled to another country to do so – travelling from south east Wales down to Bristol – okay, so not that far in reality!  We spoke to both churches to see how the visit went and what they discovered along the way. Carol from Priory Church of St Mary’s, Usk, shared: “We spent a lovely morning at St Peter’s Church, Henleaze, where we received a warm welcome from Rev Mark Pilgrim and Clare Fussell, and also her fabulous two year old daughter! We were very impressed with how they have used their limited amount of land, with a wildflower garden, the five-storey bug hotel and pond. Indoors, we gained many ideas about further recycling, especially candles, and will be contacting a local candle maker as a result. Since the visit, we have already instigated a wool swap, and it is proving very popular. …

Churches Count on Nature (CCoN) is an annual scheme where people visit church and chapel yards and record the plant and animal species they encounter. Often, this land is home to precious biodiverse habitats and managing them for people and nature is important. Churches across all denominations in England and Wales can register to participate from 16th March 2026, and CCoN 2026 will run from 6-14 June.  If you don’t have a churchyard or graveyard, you can still participate by connecting with another local church that does. Or maybe you could get a local school or wildlife group involved? Inspiration from churches who hosted a Churches Count on Nature event in previous years St Anne’s, Penparcau, Aberystwyth Eco Church does take you to some strange and interesting places, but I’d never imagined that it would lead me to a church committee meeting where I would be asking for permission to build a sunbed …for reptiles …at church. You can imagine the looks that I got!   So, how did I end up there, and was I successful? Well, in spring 2023, St Anne’s, Penparcau, Aberystwyth, already held a bronze Eco Church award. As we worked towards silver, we were starting to …

St John’s Church in the Norfolk town of Harleston is at the heart of an initiative encouraging nature recovery throughout the local community and its spaces. St John’s Church in Harleston is a bronze-awarded Eco Church in the Diocese of Norwich, which also holds a Bronze Eco Diocese award! The vicar at St John’s, the Revd Nigel Tufnell, has spearheaded the project since 2022.  A short film about the community biodiversity initiative showcases the inspiring story of how a grassroots environmental programme in a market town can bring together a parish church, local school and the wider community. The initiative has given rise to what is now known as the “Harleston Model” of nature recovery. This approach has been officially adopted by their district council, with Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils also in the process of integrating it into their frameworks.   Read on via the Diocese of Norwich’s website, and learn more from The Revd Nigel Tufnell about working with the local council and school. He shared: “Although this initiative may seem to have changed little on the surface, it has significantly altered the local community’s attitude toward nature recovery. It is now widely accepted that it is a …

Photo caption: A newly formed very calm swarm cluster with their new Queen. It’s just like touching candy floss – they do not sting unless threatened!   Bees are one of our Target-25 species at A Rocha UK. Target 25 is a project to help a range of declining species, taxonomic groups, and threatened habitats. Find our Target 25 resource page here, including our resource on bees.  St Mildred’s Church in Whippingham on the Isle of Wight achieved their Silver Eco Church award in July 2024. Eco Coordinator and bee-keeper Ruth, shares the story of their church creating an *apiary whilst working towards their silver award: “When I joined St Mildred’s Church last year, I became part of the church committee as the Eco Coordinator. My partner and I have been registered beekeepers for over ten years and are passionate about the environment. I have always loved bees and realise the vital importance they have to our planet as pollinators. Creating our apiary has sprung from Eco Church and our love of bees. *An apiary (also known as a bee yard) is a location where beehives of honey bees are kept. The church has an area of woodland, which four …

A Rocha UK is delighted to celebrate St Sadwrn’s Church in Henllan, Denbighshire, as the second church in Wales to achieve a Gold Eco Church Award.  Their Warm Space project, in particular, has garnered significant media attention; addressing food waste from local supermarkets and combatting community isolation, this initiative has become integral to the community. Be inspired by the impact this project is having in the local community by watching a short video on the Henllan Warm Space:   The dedicated team at St Sadwrn’s Church has diligently pursued eco-friendly initiatives over the past few years and enrolled in the Eco Church scheme in 2021. Their efforts have, among other things, resulted in the insulation of the church building and the innovative installation of a heavy curtain attached to the door mechanism to ward off drafts. Individuals associated with the church have shared updates on the village Facebook group, and this has kept the wider community informed of the church’s progress on its Eco Church journey. The churchyard is a haven of biodiversity, with a bank adorned with Cowslips and other wildflowers, a bee garden, a fruit-growing patch, mini ponds, a bug hotel, and bat and bird boxes. Alongside the …

St John’s Methodist Church in Settle, North Yorkshire, originally thought they had no land to include in their Eco Church application. They have now reached a gold level in the land section and created a space for people and nature to thrive! Be encouraged and inspired by all that is possible as their Eco team share the journey:  The Initial Spark When we first completed our Silver Award application, we felt we couldn’t answer the section on ‘Land’ and marked it as ‘Not Applicable’.  With 95% of our land being tarmac, we felt we could not use it for anything other than car parking. However, after encouragement from the Eco Church team, who pointed out the possibilities of this space, the Eco Group were energised to take action. We feel that we have certainly gone a long way towards creating spaces that celebrate God’s goodness and bounty in what we had previously seen as a desert. Action We focused our attention on a space at the back of the church, which was bare and forlorn, never used. As you see from these pictures, taken in early 2022, it was an uninspiring plot. It was no wonder that we never found …