We talked about CARBON FOOTPRINTS.
Your 'carbon footprint' is a way of thinking about the effect you have on the planet, especially the atmosphere- the air around us. It stands for the total amount of 'greenhouse gasses' you produce, measured in units of a gas called carbon dioxide. 'Greenhouse gasses' change climate as they increase the amount of harmful sunlight which reaches the earth, making it warm up. When we make something in a factory, burn fuel in travelling or use energy such as gas or electricity, we produce greenhouse gasses. We are harming God's creation.

We talked about the ways we could take care of the world. Only two people have filled in their Parish Basket leaflets. Paula, who cleans the church, told us about using water and newspaper to clean windows, instead of harmful chemicals in manufactured cleaners. She also uses lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda as cleaning agents instead of buying bottled cleaning materials. Just think, if you buy a bottle of cleaning fluid, chemicals will have been used to make the cleaner, chemicals which then get into the water supply when you pour them down the drain; a factory will have used resources to make the bottle; petrol or diesel will have been used up in taking the product to the shop; lorries are manufacted to transport goods; you will have used up fuel getting to the shop, if you didn't walk; the shop will be heated or air-conditioned ...and so on.

Margaret, who runs the Fair Trade stall, has a solar panel on her house roof. This means that her house is heated mostly by the warming rays of the sun, not by the use of electricity or gas. Her solar panel was installed by a man from Canada, who had used solar panels there in order to transmit radio signals over huge distances to the Arctic Circle.

We may not all be able to install solar panels yet, but we can do little things, like not using plastic bags, which have to be manufactured, then take years and years to break down in the soil after you throw them away. Plastic bags and bottles turn up all over the world on remote beaches, as we spread our rubbish. Someone, who is usually too lazy to go back into the house if she gets in the car without her reusable bags, did actually go back this week, so she wouldn't have to use the plastic ones when shopping at the supermarket. She also used a steamer, so she could cook one vegetable over another in a saucepan, instead of heating up two gas rings on the cooker.