Earn points towards an Eco Church award – the more your church does, the more points you achieve!

There are three levels of Eco Church award – bronze, silver and gold. Once you have registered your church on the online platform, complete the unique online survey to see which award level your church has achieved. If your score doesn’t gain you an Eco Church award straight away, don’t worry – the idea is to complete further actions in order to achieve the points necessary for an award. You can return to the survey at any time to update your answers. You can access our help guide if you have any questions along the way. 

The Eco Church survey - a framework for action

In order to qualify for an award, you must attain the required standard in each of the five areas covered by the Eco Church survey.  You can see when you have gained sufficient points in each Eco Survey category by looking at the coloured lines that appear on the screen with the Eco Survey questions. The lines will change colour as your points accumulate to reflect the level of award you have achieved in that category. Please note, the survey is the same for all three award levels - it is your responses that will indicate which award level you achieve and can therefore apply for! 

For example, if all the categories have turned bronze, you have reached the standard to qualify for a Bronze Award; if they all turn silver you have reached the standard to qualify for a Silver Award, and so on. However, if just some of your categories turn silver while the others turn bronze, for example, you have achieved a Bronze Award (rather than a Silver Award) because that is the level you have achieved in all the relevant areas.

Explore our Eco Church Survey summary page for overviews of all five categories and to view the survey questions in both English and Welsh.

Applying for an Eco Church Award

Once all the categories on your Eco Survey indicate that you have enough points for an award, you will be asked whether you want to apply for an award. See our help guide for submitting your survey for an award application. 

As part of your award application, you will provide your church leader’s email address so that they can confirm they have seen and approved the Eco Survey responses provided on behalf of your church. They will be sent an email from the Eco Church platform containing your survey responses to approve.

Going for gold

Applying for a gold award involves some extra steps beyond the Eco Church survey. This is so that we can learn more about your activities and achievements and understand how Eco Church is embedded in your worshipping community.

Therefore, in addition to your online application, we ask that you complete a supporting evidence pro forma, which you can download here. [N.B. some users have reported they are unable to download this form using the Chrome browser. We are working on a solution. If  you are experiencing a problem and have another browser available, please download with that]. The pro forma contains further information about what we need, why we ask for this and the process of the gold assessment.

We also ask you to create a practical plan for nature/land management plan for managing any outside space you have influence over. You can find guidance on creating a plan for nature/land management plan here, including example plans from Mortimer Methodist Church , St Mary's Church, Haughley, and St Mary's Church, Eaton Socon. 

Celebrate!

Celebrating your award is an important part of the process. Once your award has been confirmed, each member of your church team will receive a confirmation email. This contains instructions to access your certificate and web badge for celebrating your award, as well as how to make a donation as part of your award application. It will also tell you how you can share your Eco Church story to inspire others, and suggest some next steps. We encourage you to share the news of your Eco Church award in your church and wider community! 

You can also order a handmade Eco Church award plaque to display in your church. Order directly from the Grassmarket Community Project here.