Become an Eco Church
Why not record and celebrate the environmental activities of your church and register to become an Eco Church?
Simple actions such as praying for environmental causes, twinning your toilets, championing local and Fairtrade produce, or holding a harvest festival can count towards gaining an Eco Church award.
What is Eco Church?
The Diocese encourages churches to join Eco Church. Eco Church is an interdenominational Christian environmental awards scheme for churches, run by A Rocha UK. It is free to join, and easy to register on the Eco Church website.
The scheme provides tools and ideas to help churches integrate their response to environmental issues into worship and teaching, management of church buildings and land, community engagement and lifestyle.
Eco Diocese
Eco Diocese is part of the wider Eco Church scheme, to encourage churches to register with the scheme and to demonstrate our commitment to caring for God’s creation.
We have registered to become an Eco Diocese and to attain our Bronze award we need 10 per cent of our churches registered and 5 per cent of our churches in receipt of awards. Each church that registers to become an Eco Church is a step closer for Newcastle to becoming an Eco Diocese.
In addition, the whole Diocese is required to reach Eco-Church Bronze Award standards for its management of buildings and land. There is also a requirement for ethical investment of diocesan funds and for the inclusion of care for creation in training for ministry. More information can be found here.
The following initiatives are part of our work towards Eco Diocese status:
- Having a Diocesan Environment Policy in place
- Having a Diocesan Environment Working Group, chaired by Revd Mark Nash-Williams, Bishop’s Adviser on the Environment
- 21 churches have registered with Eco Church and 6 have achieved an Eco Church award
- Communicating Eco Church success stories from around the diocese through LINK, and the Eco Champions Facebook page
 Eco Schools
Eco Schools is an educational programme that encourages children to help protect their local environment. Pupils at Warkworth Church of England Aided Primary School have been doing fantastic activities with their Eco-Club including community litter picks and setting up a recycling centre for the community. The school was awarded a Green Flag Award in July 2019.
| 
