Sustainability stories

Many Quakers and Quaker meetings are taking positive action on sustainability. Read about a few of the inspiring things that are already happening below.

We’d love to hear more of your stories. If you’d like to share what your meeting has been doing then please answer the following using a total of no more than 300 words:

• What is your activity(ies) aiming to do?
• How are you doing it?
• Any advice to others?

Email your text to sunnivat@quaker.org.uk. Please also send a picture if you have one, along with details of who to credit as the photographer.

You can also share your experiences on Facebook. Visit www.facebook.com/SustainableQuakers 

Cotteridge Meeting have installed a solar array. This contributed to a reduction in energy use of 70% between 2004 and 2010. (c) Harriet Martin

Carlton Hill Meeting House

Our project aims to make Carlton Hill Quaker Meeting House a greener, more environmentally sustainable building - and one which is visibly committed to green energy. In particular, we aim to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by generating our own electricity, ...read more

Disley Meeting

Our project aims to increase the biodiversity of our large garden, improve its sustainability and create more possibilities for the Meeting to use it for social and educational purposes. Issues we are addressing include: increasing the range of wildlife friendly plants; ...read more

Dundee Meeting

DUO celebrates and raises awareness of sustainability through the planting and tending of small-scale orchards in and around Dundee. Orchards – their collective histories, grubbing up, and replanting – tell a local and global story ...read more

Hope Valley LM

Our stated aim was to help develop a retreat centre with a sustainability focus at the re-launched Quaker Community at Bamford, Derbyshire. This is worthy in itself. But more than this, we wished to test a model where any group of Friends can do things ... read more

Hertford LM

Hertford Local Meeting was one which was pleased to receive a QPSW grant to help with a project which is called “Save Energy, Save Money”. The project is being carried by Transition Hertford ... read more

Winchmore Hill Meeting

Our project aims to conserve resources by reducing water consumption which will also reduce our carbon footprint: locally by using less heated water, and regionally, by using less water ... read more

Anne Brewer, Dorking LM

I try to live in response to ‘promptings of love and truth’ so as not to cause suffering to other living beings and so as to contribute, when possible, [...read more]

Bideford LM

The Meeting started to take action in earnest towards promoting sustainable living in July 2009. This was prompted specifically by a visit of one of our members to a conference held in Brussels in 2008 [... read more]

Gwen Prince, Llanidloes LM

Challenged by a talk on Global Warming by the co-chair of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2001 a Friend and [... read more]

Pam Lunn, Coventry LM

I live in a 1960s small terraced house that had, when I bought it (in 1976), cavity walls not insulated, one inch of insulation in the loft, single-glazed badly-fitting metal-frame windows, [... read more]

Cotteridge LM

With careful analysis, determination, and a concerted effort, 90% reductions in fossil fuel use are possible! Between 2004 and 2010 Cotteridge Quaker Meeting has reduced its energy use by more than 70%. [... read more]

Oxford LM

Oxford Meeting is blessed, but also burdened, with our plain-but-handsome 17th century premises fronting on St Giles, and our 1950s oak-panelled Meeting House in the garden, [... read more]

Wandsworth Green Fair

The Wandsworth Green Fair in 2009 arose out of a small ‘green discussion group’ at Wandsworth Quaker Meeting. [... read more]

Jonathan Dale, Central Manchester LM

I have been very sensitive to the beauty of the 'natural' world for as long as I can remember. Very gradually this feeling was deepened by a sense of the awesome responsibility before God of my generation, [... read more]

Martin Smith, Wooldale LM

I’m retired and live with my wife high on a Pennine hillside. I have been moving towards a sustainable way of living for about five years. But I am no eco hero. [... read more]

John-Paul Flintoff, Hampstead LM

Three years ago I was struck by an observation made in Alistair McIntosh’s book Soil and Soul “it's no good being a campaigner if you aren't a good neighbour”. [... read more]

Lee Taylor, Milton Keynes LM

Signing up to the 10:10 campaign was a real spur for me, making me think much more about how I use energy. I'd like to say it'd been systematic, [... read more]

Lynda Williams, warden, Pales meeting house

The Pales is a beautiful stone thatched meeting house up in the hills of Radnorshire in mid Wales with spectacular views. Alongside the Meeting House is a graveyard and a field [... read more]

Bentham LM Sustainability Witness and Action Group (SWAG)

We started a sustainability group at Calf Cop Meeting House in October 2010. We are charged by our Meeting to consider the issues and to report back in due course with our ideas for action. [... read more]

Owen Everett, Watford LM

Thanks to my parents I have always been environmentally conscious on a personal level. I was brought up as a vegetarian recycling-fanatic, and as they’ve never had a car [... read more]

Wimbledon LM

In April 2008 Laurie Michaelis held a spiritual learning day on the Living Witness Project for our Area Meeting. He inspired us with his knowledge and personal commitment. [... read more]

Settle LM

A structural survey in 2004 showed that the Meeting House floor was starting to rot. The electric heaters required replacing. After meetings in the winter [... read more]

John and Judith Ayers, Sidmouth meeting

We moved to East Devon from Surrey in 2006 to a 1950s bungalow in considerable need of refurbishment. [... read more]

Gerald Conyngham, Exeter LM

How can we respond to the enormous challenges the world is facing, including peak oil, climate change and increasing inequality? Quaker Testimonies to Simplicity and to Equality show me [... read more]

Janet Quilley, Leyburn LM

Since October 2009, three members of Leyburn LQM have been involved in setting up a transition group, Transition Richmond Yorkshire (TRY). The primary focus has been awareness raising. [... read more]

Alice Yaxley, Coventry LM

I watched the movie “The Age of Stupid” last year, and heard a presentation about the contracting world economy from one of the writers at The Automatic Earth blog. [... read more]

Barbara Mark, Ludlow LM

There are 3 of us in our house, my son of 24 and me and my husband. We are all trying to run businesses from the property. Our energy bills are quite high but [... read more]

Anthony Woolhouse, New Milton LM

Life in a new Eco home is not so different to life in other houses. The process of living – of eating, washing, entertaining and sleeping is the same. [... read more]

Quaker House, New Milton

Quaker House is a care home for 40 elderly residents in New Milton, Hampshire. In 2010 the board authorised the installation of solar water heating as its first step in improving [... read more]

Roy Vickery, Westminster LM

Westminster is an inner city Meeting; few Friends living nearby, most depend on the Underground to travel to Meeting. Three MfW are held each week: Tuesday lunchtime [... read more]

Tom Greeves, Cotteridge LM

My interest in renewable energy dates to 1972 when I read ‘Limits to Growth’, the report of an excellent research programme carried out by a team at MIT in Boston, [... read more]

Chris and Harriet Martin, Cotteridge LM

We’ve become increasingly climate change conscious since seeing the matching curves of CO2 and world temperature increases in 1979. Between 1979 and 2008 we cut our [... read more]

Richard Thompson, Reading LM

True Food Co-operative in Reading is a community owned business. There are two levels of membership, Basic (which all members subscribe to) and Active, [... read more]

Anthony Maturin, Wellington, New Zealand MM

Call it a Concern, or much prayer and reading on the subject, whatever, but really the intuitive knowledge that it is the right and essential thing to do. [... read more]

Tony Weeks, Ireland YM

In the late 1980’s, I was teaching in the economics department of a university in England. Two significant events in my life had just happened: I had become a member [... read more]

Maud Grainger, Colchester LM

In order to live sustainably I believe we need to live in one world, be active and participate in our communities. Out of this belief I approached my then employers, [... read more]