Environmental Policy
God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature
So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself”. Genesis 1:26-28
We believe that we are stewards of God’s earth and as such it is our duty and responsibility to ensure we are making every effort not only to protect and preserve the environment He has given us, but also to promote positive ways of developing environmental growth (re-greening our natural environment).
Working in a cross-cultural and global organisation we recognise that our actions have a direct impact on the communities with which we work and that we must make sustainable changes, no matter how small, in the way we live and work to reduce our environmental impact.
We are committed to the following:
General:
- Promote energy efficient working practices both for home and office working
- Reduce and seek to eliminate all single use plastic products
- Utilise available methods for minimising travel, such as hosting events online where appropriate
Waste and resources:
- Endeavour to conserve energy and minimise waste in all we do- both materially and digitally. This includes using energy efficient initiatives and utility suppliers, promoting the use of recycled materials where possible, re-using all we can, and disposing of waste in an environmentally efficient manner.
- Monitor the size of our digital footprint by weighing up the impact of paper-based vs digital for promotion of events/publication. Where digital is necessary, we will seek to ensure it is minimal, sustainable and necessary.
Travel:
As a mission organisation that sends and receives international volunteers and workers, we recognise that it is not possible for us to eliminate all air travel. Instead we will seek to mitigate the effects of international travel through a Carbon Offsetting option for the Step and Stride programmes, as well as monitoring and managing our programmes and events so that we only take flights when necessary. For Step and Stride, we are committing to offer this as an optional add-on from October 2021, and will have it as a mandatory built in cost from Summer 2022. We will continue to work towards this for Stay and Incoming Mission, and will update the policy accordingly.
Where in-person events are required, we will encourage the most efficient and least harmful methods of travel to any UK based events, encouraging the use of public transport and car sharing.
Ongoing commitment:
- We will conduct regular reviews to ensure that targets continue to be met, and we will always seek to do more to maintain high environmental standards.
- We will initiate conversation with our members, ensuring this policy, and the actions we are taking are easily accessible
- We also recognise our duty to encourage staff, members and supporters to continue to be environmentally conscious in their practices at home. As such we are committed to ongoing conversation and sharing of ideas and resources to allow for this. As part of this, we have an Environmental Action Group (EAG) who meet every other month to monitor progress and identify and implement new strategies for continued improvement as well as take staff concerns to the leadership and trustees.
- We agree to be held accountable to one another and to the EAG by regular updates at both leadership and trustee level
- We will always seek to increase our targets and do more to combat our environmental impact
Further information on specific steps we are taking to action the above will be available shortly.