Creation Care
Here at Walter Scott, we are committed to caring for God’s Creation. This is expansive work that is not just about switching to greener ways of doing the things we already do, but thinking about our relationship with the environment, our spirituality, and the responsibilities we have to know and be known in the place we are. This page is a repository of the ways we are living into this commitment at Walter Scott through the actions and initiatives of our Green Team, Camp Hosts, and many others.
“Going Green”
- Planting vegetable gardens to share with the community
- Composting at Walter Scott
- Switching to fair trade coffee and tea
- Conducting an energy audit to be more responsible and aware of our energy usage as well as how we can better conserve and use our resources
- Switching from liquid detergent in large plastic packaging to detergent sheets in packaging that we compost on-site
- Switching to brown (unbleached) paper products which are composted on-site when feasible
- Creating ecology and environmentally focused activities for CCIW Summer Camp Usage
- Partnering with Faith-in-Place to convert grass under power-lines to native prairie
- Sending recycling back with visitors to camp while services are unavailable in our area
- Installing a 10kW solar array to power our central group of buildings and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels
- Acquiring goats to remove invasive underbrush without the usage of ecologically hazardous herbicides
- Offering a distributable resource on knowing our place within the larger seasons, cycles, and actual place of the natural world.
- Creating signage around native plants and their importance in combination with Disciples Women on our Frog Pond Trail! Follow the link to see our Frog Pond Trail Native Species Signage.
- Switching to cloth hand towels instead of paper towels in sleeping areas
- Creating our Plastics & Faith video series for Earth Month 2024
- Being a part of the Perennial Atlas Citizen Science Project through the Land Institute
- Participating in “Low Mow May” (Only mowing around our buildings as necessary and mowing less overall to support biodiversity instead of chemical fueled wasted lawns)
What Can I Do?
- Plant Native Plants instead of grass or non-natives in your community’s, company’s, church’s green spaces in addition to your own yard
- Utilize Foraged Species in the Kitchen. Here are a couple of examples
- Consider where your food waste goes. Learn how to compost if you have the space or join a program like Mill to have your food waste go full circle back into food again.