Harms Woods Outing: May 15, 2021
Harms Woods Outing May 15, 9 am – Noon
Come celebrate spring with a habitat restoration outing at beautiful Harms Woods in Glenview! We will be removing invasive plants to allow more space and sunlight for our beautiful native plants. This outing is suitable for anyone 10 and older (youth must be accompanied by a responsible adult) and everyone works at their own pace. The woods are beautiful, the wildflowers will be out and you will be doing extremely important work in restoring vital habitat to support our native plants, insects and birds.
Walk at Harms Woods: April 21, 2021
The Green Team invites you to nourish your spirit on the trails at Harms Woods on Wednesday, April 21. Gather in the parking lot of the Blue Star Memorial Woods, on E. Lake Ave. at 1pm.
Bring your bike and bike on the paved trail or put on your walking shoes and walk on the dirt paths. We will wander on the trails alongside the North Branch Chicago River. After some time in nature, you can head back home or proceed around the corner to share some food at Hackney’s on Harms Road. Contact Shirley Adams or Judy Holman with questions. All are welcome. All ages.
Tickets Now Available – Peter Mayer Virtual Concert: March 26, 2021
Peter Mayer, celebrated singer and songwriter, will perform on Saturday, April 24 at 7 pm. Peter’s work is known throughout the Unitarian Universalists Congregations and one of his best known and beloved songs Blue Boat Home is included in the UU Hymnal.
Our congregation was honored to see Peter perform in our sanctuary last year and are very excited to welcome him back, this time on Zoom. The concert is hosted by the UCE Green Team with proceeds benefitting The Talking Farm. Tickets are $20 per person and can be purchased through Eventbrite here starting Monday, March 29.
The Talking Farm is an initiative that helps people learn to farm and grow, harvest and eat their own food. It works closely with the students of Evanston Township High School, who work the Edible Acre, a garden across from the high school. Its harvest is used in the ETHS cafeteria and students learn about local climate, local farming, and developing a relationship with the land. Students from the Edible Acre will be participating in our April 22 Earth Day celebration!
For more information contact Sandra Robinson at srobinson@ucevanston.org.
7,000 tons and counting
Congrats! Collective Resource recently announced an inspiring “7000 Ton” achievement – check out the article reprint below. If you are not currently composting, we urge you to get on-board! One easy way is to join the UCE Composting Coop for only $5/month per person (max of $15/month per household.) See the 2-page Composting Tip Sheet for details. When you’re ready to sign up, just fill out the online UCE composting signup form. Questions? Contact Renee Hoff at rdhoff99@yahoo.com.
And (drumroll!) here’s the Collective Resource article reprint
We’re happy to announce that we have reached another diversion milestone: 7000 tons! Can you believe it?
What’s amazing to us is that’s 7,000 tons lifted, shifted and tipped by hand—no hydraulics. That’s a whole lot of muscle power from our crew. 14 million pounds of lifting and that doesn’t even include the weight of the containers, just the food scraps within. (1)
Because tons are kind of hard to visualize, we used this nifty calculator (2) to try to help you understand how very much that is. It’s about 1/4th as heavy as the Statue of Liberty and equivalent in weight to 60 blue whales, 560 school buses or 1,400 elephants. Can you picture that?
Who do we thank first? Our crew for all of the heavy lifting or our composting community for putting their money and effort where it counts? Don’t make us choose!
By diverting all of those food scraps from landfills, we’ve had the collective impact of reducing 11,978 tons of methane, and we’re not stopping there!
Collective Resource Compost
838 Brown Ave, Evanston IL 60202
customerservice@collectiveresource.us
www.collectiveresource.us
(1) The first ton was hauled by Erlene [Howard] with some help from her friend Marla.
(2) If you have a minute, play around with this calculator. On the right is something called “Sort Order”. Changing the setting from “closest first” to “highest first” or “lowest first” yields different and delightful results.
Seeds of Care: October 25, 2020
Evanston Interreligious Sustainability Circle
Harms Woods Work Outing
Sunday, October 25
1:15 pm – 4:00 pm
Meet at Glenview Woods parking lot
(west side of Harms Road, just south of Glenview Road)
Come dressed for the weather, including footwear (usually there is plenty of mud!)
This is an easy outing in beautiful Harms Woods, led by the very knowledgeable long-time stewards,
John and Jane Balaban. We most likely will be harvesting wildflower seed to be used in forest
preserve restoration next spring. It is an activity appropriate for all ages, including young people
(should generally be 10 and older and must be accompanied by an adult) and senior citizens. We will
be in groups of no more than 10. Bring your own mask, gloves, water bottle, snack and hand sanitizer,
and please review the Cook County Forest Preserves Covid-19 guidelines prior to coming.
For more information or to reserve a spot: contact Dale at dalecgriffin@comcast.net or
Susan at Susan.L.Comstock@gmail.com or 847-807-9760.
UCE Composting Remains “Open for Business”
Did you know that (even in the midst of the pandemic) many UCE members continue to participate in the “UCE Composting Coop?” Since we are eating at home more and, thus, have greater control over our food waste, composting becomes even easier to integrate into our daily lives. But, does composting really make a difference? Consider the following statistics:
- Food scraps that go to landfills decompose “anaerobically,” releasing methane gas in the process. Methane is around 30% more damaging than CO2 over the long-term and 80 times more damaging over the short-term!
- The EPA estimates that 22% of what goes into landfills is food waste. Food waste is the single largest material sent to landfills.
- The average American wastes a pound of food a day – that comes to 150,000 tons of food per day across the U.S. Not surprisingly, healthier diets rich in fresh produce and minimally processed ingredients are associated with higher levels of food waste.
- According to the Composting Council, if everyone in the United States composted all of their food waste, the impact would be equivalent to removing 7.8 million cars from the road!
This is where composting can help. Food scraps that are commercially composted are given the right environment to biodegrade and thus do not contribute to methane gas production. Rather, composted food scraps are turned into rich, organic soil treatment.
The cost to participate in UCE’s Composting Coop is only $60 per person per year (up to a $180 maximum per household.) Or, if you live in Evanston, you might choose to participate during the winter months only (December-March) for $20 per person for the full four months, up to a $60 maximum per household. (This four-month program is especially designed for Evanston residents who compost food scraps in their Evanston yard waste containers during the non-winter months.)
If you are interested in signing up for either service, fill out the UCE composting signup form. For an additional $10, Collective Resource (the commercial composter we use) will provide you with a kitchen counter composting bucket. (Please do not include the $10 in your payment to UCE but rather contact Erlene Howard of Collective Resource at erlene.k.howard@gmail.com to make separate arrangements.)
See the Composting Tip Sheet for more information on how to set up your kitchen for composting and for a listing of what is/is not compostable. The green composting bin(s) are located at the southeast end of the church parking lot. Just drive in and deposit your weekly composting (no plastic bags; however, paper or other compostable bags are fine.) If there are two green composting bins, please fill up one completely before using the second. The FAQ page of the Composting Tip Sheet should answer most questions, but if not, email Renee Hoff at rdhoff99@yahoo.com.
UCE and Evanston’s Climate Action Resilience Plan
August 28, 2020
Recently the Executive Board unanimously passed a resolution calling UCE to adopt the goals and principles of Evanston’s Climate Action Resilience Plan. The plan sets targets for reducing carbon emissions and waste, and managing the canopy of and stormwater for the city and wider community. “This resolution articulates our shared values of environmental sustainability, accountability and justice” says Eileen Wiviott, acting Senior Minister at UCE. “Though the specifics of how we move toward the aspirations of this resolution will be unfolding, the staff, board, and leadership of UCE are committing to work together toward this important aim.”
The plan guides policy formation and decision making through principles like cost-effectiveness, measurable outcomes and a focus on equity. “Adopting the plan doesn’t prescribe UCE to specific policies or procedures. Rather it makes plain our aspirations to do our part for the environment, and respect the web of life” said Shirley Adams of the UCE Green Team. Board members agreed a plan would provide future board members a compass for setting priorities and decision making. “Setting a goal to reduce energy use 30% by 2035 gives the board and management real latitude for setting objectives and determining policy” says Michael Drennan, the Green Team member proposing the resolution. “The values identified also keep board and management accountable to the wider congregation.”
Next steps include the adoption of frameworks and standards to further inform policy making, outreach to the congregation, and networking between different church teams and outside non-profit agencies like Elevate Energy. The Green Team looks forward to providing substantive guidance on these points, and thanks the current board for demonstrating climate leadership.
Green Tip from the UCE Green Team – 12/13/2019
Here at UCE, many of us love to travel. Others of us have work-related reasons for traveling. Yet, how do we grapple with the reality that traveling has a very detrimental impact on the climate? Per the New York Times, “going someplace far away … is the biggest single action a private citizen can take to worsen climate change. One seat on a flight from New York to Los Angeles effectively adds months’ worth of human-generated carbon emissions to the atmosphere.”*
Limiting travel is the most straightforward way to tackle the problem. However, swearing off flying completely isn’t something that most of us can (or want) to do. So, what can we do instead? Purchasing carbon offsets is an alternative where you compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions your traveling produces by donating to a project designed to reduce emissions by an equal amount. There are a lot of choices when it comes to carbon offset programs. Standards groups like The Gold Standard or Green-e are two ways of verifying that your money is used appropriately. One company that has been vetted by both the New York Times and the PBS NewsHour is Cool Effect. PBS described them as a “nonprofit … with triple-verified, financially strong and ethically sound projects to offset the traveler’s footprint.”** The New York Times travel desk uses Cool Effect to offset airplane travel by staff members on assignment.
To learn more, go to https://www.cooleffect.org and click on the Offset Travel button. The price for purchasing offsets may surprise you: a round-trip 4-6 hour flight carries a carbon-offset price tag of under $8. If you work for a business or university, encourage them to join Cool Effect’s mission at a corporate level – see this link: https://www.cooleffect.org/content/for-business for details.
Per Cool Effect, “At the end of the day, the idea is simple: Do what you can, anything that keeps the planet cooler helps! If your flight length falls between two options, Cool Effect humbly challenges you to round up! Clearly, the planet is heating up and Mother Earth appreciates every tonne that helps to keep her cool!”
References:
* https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/travel/traveling-climate-change.html?module=inline
Celebrate Sanctuary, Measure our Carbon Footprint
The City of Evanston this October will vote on a historic Climate Action Resilience Plan (CARP), one guaranteed to shape the city in decades to come. Previous plans had the city shooting for carbon footprint reductions of twelve, even sixteen percent. The CARP under discussion aims to eliminate our carbon footprint entirely by 2050. This will affect transportation, business and buildings alike. More than a decade before the City of Evanston passed an ordinance demanding buildings benchmark their environmental emissions UCE Green Team member Alex Sproul began tracking ours. Using Alex’ data, and informed by UCE staff and membership Michael Drennan has begun creating a picture of what our daily life as a congregation means for the environment. Realistic in its assessment, this sixty minute carbon footprint analysis nonetheless finds good news in focusing future efficiency and conservation efforts towards the individual member. Join Green Team member Michael Drennan, October 14th after service in Rm 3 to learn about our carbon emissions, and celebrate the difference our sanctuary makes!
NEWS FROM GREEN SANCTUARY – FEBRUARY 2016 A TALKING FARM UPDATE SUBMITTED BY: JEANNE KERL
The Talking Farm (TTF) is a group of folks primarily from Evanston, Chicago, and Skokie who work on sustainable urban farming projects. UCE’s shared plate proceeds have funded TTF in the past, so we thought we’d update you on what TTF has been doing the past few years.
Here’s an excerpt from an article that appeared in the Huff Post recently:
“The Talking Farm (TTF) advocates sustainable agriculture and organic growing practices and runs the Edible Acre and Howard Street Farm projects. The organization was founded in 2006 out of the efforts of the Evanston Food Council.
The Howard Street Farm has been in existence since 2010, after the village of Skokie offered TFF, a 20 year lease on a 2 acre parcel of land right on the Roger’s Park/Skokie border. However, obtaining the land was only the beginning of getting the farm up and running. Over the next few years, The Talking Farm went through the long process of making it legal to have an urban farm in Skokie and sell the produce, which was the first of its kind in the area…
In 2015, TFF sponsored intern programs at their Howard Street Farm in Skokie, provided 285 hours of school instruction to Evanston Township High School, Y.O.U. (Youth Opportunity United) and the TOT Learning Center, 2498 hours of volunteer time were donated to help the Howard Street Farm operate. They now sell their produce from the Howard Street Farm to Local Foods in Chicago and several area restaurants including Farmhouse and Boltwood in Evanston. The farm continues to grow and flourish amidst the bleak industrial landscape surrounding it. Every September, they hold their annual Hullabaloo, which is a celebration of the farm and sustainable farming.”
The Green Sanctuary folks are hoping to organize a UCE work day this spring or early summer combined with tours of the Howard Street Farm. Stay tuned. We also want to celebrate the amazing work done by this local organization with the support of UCE.