EcoQuakers Ireland have produced a new booklet Regenerating Our Common Home – Quaker Considerations for Restoration and Protection of the Environment.

EcoQuakers, which is made up of members of Ireland Yearly Meeting from across the island, hope that this new booklet will encourage Meetings to return to their sustainability plans and update them with more ambitious goals and targets.

Suggestions included in the booklet include examining the insulation and sustainable energy potential of our Meeting Houses. We are also encouraged to examine our personal carbon footprints, e.g. from travel, and modes of transport.

To help us consider sustainable and ethical purchases, EcoQuakers have also compiled a useful list of Sustainable and Eco-friendly Goods and Services in Ireland.

EcoQuakers produced the Regenerating Our Common Home – Quaker Considerations for Restoration and Protection of the Environment booklet in response to Yearly Meetings Committee Minute 20.71, which called on Friends to:

        • Acknowledge a climate and biodiversity emergency

         • Apply the test of sustainability to all our decisions, at all levels

Once Meetings have updated their sustainability plans, they are encouraged to send their updated plans to EcoQuakers at ecoquakers@quakers.ie

In a letter to Meetings accompanying the booklet, the EcoQuakers committee said, “These actions are the proper spiritual and logical responses to the current state of climate disruption. They would also help us to continue to fulfil our response to the call from the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) World Quaker Gathering in Peru in 2016 ‘to preserve this Earth for our children, our grandchildren and all future generations to come, working as though life were to continue for 10,000 years to come.’

“After more than a year of research, writing, and editing, we are very happy to present this detailed guide to you, and hope that it will prove useful to both Meetings and individual Friends in responding to the climate crisis. As we begin to return to our Meeting Houses after nearly two years of restrictions, there has never been a better time for us to examine the sustainability of our Meetings and our own lives, and we hope you will use this booklet to do so.

“EcoQuakers Ireland strongly encourages your Meeting to once again prepare an ambitious sustainability plan and to reflect on every aspect of your Meeting to see where sustainability can be nurtured and improved. We encourage you to set sustainability goals and to work with other Meetings, faiths, and organisations to achieve those goals.”