Sustainability stories - Westminster LM
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 (attendance c. 15), Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings (average attendance c. 40).
A Warden lives on the premises and shares duties with his partner, and employs a cleaner. The Wardens are not Quakers and rarely participate in Quaker activities. They were appointed to maximise the income which the building generates. They are often ahead of the Meeting as a whole when it comes to green issues (and can come up with solutions which more blinkered greens would have not considered). The MH has a small yard at the back and the Wardens have a private roof garden. So far we have not identified a space for recycling bins; we encourage people to take things home and recycle there.
Over the years we have attempted to try and reduce our carbon footprint, but we have made little progress.
Problems include:
We come from a wide area throughout London, and consequently any discussion meetings take place before or after MfW. Even if people are willing to make journeys to attend discussion meetings, the amount of lettings mean it’s usually difficult to get a room for such meetings.
Many members equate green issues with fairtrade issues (another concern not yet taken aboard), so discussion becomes confused.
Even if Friends try to reduce waste and reduce our carbon footprint, their use of the building is only a small proportion of the total use, so unless we place notices all over the place and hope other users read them, we can only lead by example. At present our example is neither obvious nor inspiring. How can we educate other users? It’s not unusual to see cups being washed up under running taps and similar wasteful actvities.
We also need to educate many of our Members (particularly some of the older ones), When the Wardens suggested that we placed dead flowers in polythene bags and leave them for adding to their compost bin, a Friend immediately suggested that we should to go out and buy polythene bags to put the flowers in.
When our Meeting Room was redecorated a Member supplied insulating curtain lining and sewed it in. Then the Clerk of Premises decided that the curtains shouldn’t be rehung, as in his opinion what we saved by better insulation would be lost by the need for extra lighting. Presumably as a result of this, one of our most green members is far less active and rarely attends MfW.
However we have made some progress. We’ve had a series of Good Lives sessions, which, I’m told, were successful. We’ve encouraged Friends to make the connection between climate change and our Peace Testimony (we open our library and provide teas after the annual climate change march). Many (probably most) of our younger members are aware of green concerns and are taking steps to adopt greener lifestyles.
We’d love to hear the story of you or your meeting too. Just email sunnivat@quaker.org.uk and tell us about it.
