The Sunday Mail
Besides spreading the Word, churches are also doing great things in taking care of the environment. Below are snippets of the activities that some churches are doing in waste management.
River of Life: We are into pothole filling and litter picking, we do that every Sunday morning before the service. We also provide in-house bins during services and we use our own truck to carry the refuse to Pomona where we pay US$5 to dispose.
United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe: Ethical environmental management is our value. We do use posters, fliers and kaylites during functions. We also have caretakers and volunteers to clean up after functions. Thereafter the local authority collects the waste. Our motto is “Change begins with you, change begins with us, and change begins with all of us.”
Seventh Day Adventist: We have main streamed stewardship and education. We make sure that at every gathering, people are taught about stewardship. We carry out awareness campaigns to conscitise members to participate in clean up campaigns. We also provide bins in public places. An education programme for kids is teaching them stewardship and on finishing, they get certificates which are called honours. Children are also encouraged to do crafts or artifacts using waste material. Our children are also taught camping skills so that they do it in a way that is environmentally friendly.
Heartfelt Ministries International: When we finished building our church in Ashdown Park, the residents there used to dump litter all over. The church adopted a culture of picking them up at the shops and surrounding areas before placing it in bins. We also make announcements on waste management every Sunday and have a cleaning department which is responsible for all the waste management issues.
Christ Embassy: Service providers collect sanitary ware, including diapers. However they are not sure how they are then disposed. We do a number of community services, especially towards year end. This includes clean ups and tree planting. We use the social media for all our adverts. We also use our very own platforms — ‘yookos and kingschart’ which work almost like Facebook and WhatsApp. We have awards for our outstanding members and we are proposing to include an environmental aspect starting 2016.
United Family International Church: We command a large followership, hence we prioritise waste management in order to avert health hazards. We have a cleaning department which has a membership of over 350. The members are provided with protective clothing as well as adequate cleaning material. Bins are placed at every entrance point and there we have over 15 of them which are then emptied into a skip-bin provided by the local authority. The town council then collects the refuse from the skip bin for final disposal. It is the church’s vision to have a safety, health and environmental policy and guidelines on waste management.
Harvest House International: We adopted a street in Bulawayo for which we provide with bins. We also provide in-house bins during services and conferences.
ZAOGA: The church has a farm and we do recycling there. We contracted a waste management company to collect our waste.
