Our congregation is one of five pilot congregations looking at ways of caring for our communities and planet by working together to learn how to measure and then reduce our carbon footprint, where we can.

The SA Synod has set itself the target of reaching net zero carbon emissions by the year 2040. By firstly figuring out ways to estimate the carbon emissions of our congregation, we can measure what it is we are trying to reduce, and share our learnings with the other pilot congregations. It’s a great way to engage with our church community about how we can contribute to a healthier planet.

Eventually, we would like to measure all the ‘church related’ carbon emissions of all the congregations and church agencies across our Synod. Our congregation is one of the first to work on establishing a consistent way of estimating a church’s current carbon emissions.

Travelling to and from church as part of our church community activities is something most of us do, which brings us to our form with questions on church-related travel. ‘Church related’ travel includes things like congregation worship, meetings, fellowship and working bees.

The information you provide will not be identifiable once the numbers are put into our ‘carbon emissions calculator’ spreadsheet. Your specific data will be buried amongst all the other data collected from other members. Once data entry is completed the form with your information will be disposed of. We ask for your name on the form only so we know how many members of the congregation we have information for, without any double-ups of data.

We are very grateful to you for playing a part in caring for our community and planet through helping us build a picture of our church’s travel carbon footprint.

If you can download the fillable form here and return to the office.  If you’re unable to fill in the form online, print it, or a few printed ones will be available.

If you have any questions talk to the team of Peter Cranwell, Jane Bassham, Tim Lee and Tony Dyson.

Thanks