Eco-conversations

I was not at St John's this Sunday but have had some good green church conversations lately. Last Thursday morning I was talking with Debbie from New Hope church in Reading. She was telling me about all their recycling and how their cleaner is enthusiastic about Ecover toilet cleaner, in part because it doesn't make her feel ill to use it (not surprising I suppose when conventional toilet cleaners require 400 times more water to dilute them into a solution that's deemed safe to return them to rivers). They buy in bulk from the ethical superstore and then pump it out into their bottles. Disappointingly this works out at about the same price as buying Ecover in bottles from Tescos, although it's clearly greener.
Then I had lunch with eco-reps from two other churches. Heather in Pangbourne had just organised a talk on climate change attended by 70 people from the village and told us of schemes for the community to compost veg waste from local shops.
Finally on Sunday we were at St George's in Wash Common, Newbury (pictured above), where plans are in hand to install geothermal heating (apparently it has to be the more expensive straight into the ground type as they do not have sufficient land to do the criss cross variety - luckily there are no vaults!) and to produce the power needed to pump this heat with photo-voltaic cells. Carbon-neutral status is surely on the way.