Eco-Justice
To combine caring for the environment with our concern for social justice, we have included an Eco-Justice component to our work. While the environment surrounds all of us, very often a disproportionate impact of environmental damage falls of those less fortunate than us. We have begun work on two projects:
Cool Cities: Our church members come from 30 cities and towns, from Chicago to Aurora. We are volunteering with the “Cool Cities” project, in which local governments agree to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The target is a 7% reduction from 1990 levels by 2012. We are working with towns including Brookfield, Clarendon Hills, Darien, LaGrange Park, and Riverside to move them toward Cool Cities certification. Is your town a Cool City? Join us in our work!
Electronics Recycling: Americans discard tons of used computers, phones, PDAs, and other electronic devices every day. All this electronic gear, after a short stay in our basements and garages, ends up in disposal sites. A large bulk of it travels across oceans to be dumped in non-sanitary landfills in some of the poorest places in the world, including Nigeria and Bangladesh. There, toxic chemicals and heavy metals can leach into water supplies. We need to re-use what we can, and recycle the rest with local recyclers that provide healthy working conditions and follow certified-safe procedures.
We have conducted two e-waste collection events in conjunction with Sims Recycling, a company committed to responsible recycling and disposal of electronic products. We saw first-hand how electronic waste is converted to usable materials at a tour of the Sims facility in West Chicago in February of 2009.
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