Recycling in the forest
As I mentioned before, this summer I travelled to the States to attend Opus 2010 – the continental Unitarian Universalist young adult conference.
Unsurprisingly, I had a great time. I made several (attractive) new friends and took part in a variety of workshops and activities. I wouldn’t say that I was likely to be one of the more memorable characters at the conference, but hey, I contributed and I got lots of ideas.
One thing that struck me particularly was the general underlying commitment to the environment.
The camp took place in Kankakee, Illinois; a town which does not recycle. This doesn’t mean that UU young adults will then not recycle at their conference. No, we still sorted our trash and collected our recycling. It just had to be hauled out at the end of the event.
People had t-shirts espousing environmental causes and sometimes talked a good talk, but it (probably) wasn’t just window-dressing, and nor was it necessarily a deep ideological commitment. It was a bunch of regular people integrating some simple stuff into their lives – even when it caus logistical issues.
Unitarian Universalists respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Seven principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association
One corollary of this principle is that Unitarian Universalists should recycle, as a religious imperative. And we don’t need to have adopted specific principles to think that perhaps we should too.
Image by Finding Josephine @ flickr
I think that first we should reduce waste, then re-use and then recycle if we cannot do those two. I don’t know about Opus but our GA Annual Meetings seem to produce a lot of waste paper – thank goodness someone is now looking at an electronic version of the GA Handbook.
With best wishes, Louise
Louise, that’s a good point. I’m all for more electronic information and less print – as well as less packaging in general.