St. Isidore’s recently formed Social Justice Team has been meeting twice a month, learning about the Seven Pillars of Catholic Social Justice. Now we’re ready to put what we’ve learned into action. Our first focus is Pillar #7; Care for God’s Creation. This pillar states:
On a planet conflicted over environmental issues, the Catholic tradition insists that we show our respect for the Creator by our stewardship of creation. Care for the earth is not just an Earth Day slogan, it is a requirement of our faith. We are called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation. This environmental challenge has fundamental moral and ethical dimensions that cannot be ignored (USCCB).
And what is our initial focus? Plastic. As the ‘UN environment programme (www.unep.org)’ reports:
While plastic has many valuable uses, we have become addicted to single-use plastic products — with severe environmental, social, economic and health consequences.
Around the world, one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, while up to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. In total, half of all plastic produced is designed for single-use purposes – used just once and then thrown away.
Plastics, including microplastics, are now ubiquitous in our natural environment. They are becoming part of the Earth’s fossil record and a marker of the Anthropocene, our current geological era. They have even given their name to a new marine microbial habitat called the “plastisphere”.
Systemic change is needed to stop the flow of plastic waste ending up in the environment.
Of the seven billion tonnes of plastic waste generated globally so far, less than 10 per cent has been recycled. Millions of tonnes of plastic waste are lost to the environment, or sometimes shipped thousands of kilometres to destinations where it is mostly burned or dumped.
What better time to kick off ‘Care for God’s Creation’ than on Earth Day, which this year takes place on April 22. And what better way to eliminate ‘single-use plastic’ than by not needing it to begin with. After all of the Masses on April 22/23, our committee will be handing out samples of Earth Breeze’s Laundry Detergent – Liquidless Eco Sheets. The benefits are: no plastic container for shipping or recycling, shipping has less volume and is lighter in weight, and no water included. Take the samples home and try them out. Our hope is you find these a viable replacement for liquid detergent. Just imagine the change our parish alone can make in the environment if we converted to using these detergent sheets.
We would like to thank Earth Breeze (www.earthbreeze.com) for their generous donation of these samples.
Imagine the change our parish can make if we converted to liquid-less detergent sheets. All it takes is one small step to get us started on the right path to eliminating single-use plastic.
