Sustainable Living

 

by Susan Emery

St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA is an Earth Care Congregation committed to climate-friendly practices both on the church campus and in the lifestyles of the congregation. The Session has committed the campus to becoming carbon neutral, and the first step in reducing our carbon footprint was installing solar panels on the church buildings in early 2024.

As part of the church’s commitment to environmentally friendly policies and education, a Carbon Neutral Task Force was created to explore ways to engage the congregation and the Newport Beach community. We reached out to Live Oak United Church of Christ in Brea, a congregation demonstrating environmental leadership in Orange County, for mutual support and sharing of ideas.

Live Oak UCC, formerly Brea UCC, hosted sustainable living fairs in past years and suggested that St. Mark do the same on our campus. Live Oak had relationships with eco-vendors and organizations that could be participants at a St. Mark event. In a spirit of generosity, Live Oak offered to aid with logistics, staffing, and marketing.

Thus, the first Sustainable Living Fair was hosted by St. Mark on October

12, 2024. Held outdoors on the church patio, the fair included fifteen organizations providing informational literature, hands-on table demonstrations, and friendly volunteers to help answer visitor questions. Children’s activities were provided by the church’s children’s ministry program. St. Mark also hosted a welcome table and offered each guest a gift bag (made from recycled paper) that included a pencil with the church name, information about the church’s earth-friendly activities, and a snack.

We organized the fair based on the goals of advocating for climate-friendly policies, supporting local natural resources, and providing information about sustainable lifestyles. We are a coastal congregation and wanted organizations that protected ocean and wetland habitats, including Coastkeeper, Amigos de Bolsa Chica, Crystal Cove Conservancy, and Laguna Greenbelt.

Organizations representing climate advocacy included Citizen’s Climate

Lobby, Planet Protectors, and The Climate Reality Project. We also included a local author, Terry La Page, whose book Eye of the Storm: Facing Climate and Social Chaos with Calm and Courage was available for purchase.

Our lifestyle vendors included Hapa Honey (a popular exhibit complete with a beehive and delicious honey), Cool OC, Interfaith Power and Light, Live2Free, Orange County Power Authority, CR&R (local waste management with sustainable practices), and Elemental Design (a regenerative landscape company).

We were fortunate to have an excellent community engagement expert who prepared event flyers, an event banner, and a vigorous social media outreach campaign.

Over the next few months, we’ll be reviewing what we can do to improve the fair next year and recognizing what we did that worked well. So far, there is much agreement that we were able to attract excellent and enthusiastic organizations.

Several organizations commented that they were heartened by a faith organization taking the lead on a climate education event. We hope to continue our conversations and partnerships with them in the future.

Susan Emery is a member of St. Mark Presbyterian Church, active with Angeles Chapter of Sierra Club, busy watching her toddler grandchildren, retired Community Development Director in Orange County, and enjoys hiking with her Australian Shepherd.