Serve, Work and Transform: Earth Care Tips for Celebrating Holidays

Presbyterians for Earth Care

Monthly Promos and Creation Care Tips

Here are our monthly creation care tips. Please share them with your communications person for inclusion in your October newsletter or weekly bulletin announcements.(Let us know who your communication person is, and we can deliver this directly to their inbox.)

Eco-friendly Celebrations and Traditions

in a Season of Giving

We are a consumer-driven society and oftentimes, in our attempts to celebrate with decorations, parties, and gifts, we damage, even desecrate, creation. As we conscientiously work to conserve natural resources by using eco-friendly products, sustainable and local foods, we use less water,

impose less on our land, and use fewer minerals. Remember the three Rs, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle that contribute to treading more gently? The first of these is reduce, which is to make less, so we want to make less our impact on creation in all that we do, less in our consuming, especially

throughout our upcoming holidays of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

How can we start? Use natural products for decorations, such as hay bales, pumpkins, and sheaves of corn, to decorate your home. Decorate the table with a cornucopia with fruits and veggies that you can use later in the kitchen. Ditch the plastic and beware of greenwashing, a deceptive marketing practice where companies misleadingly present their products, services, or overall operations as more environmentally friendly or sustainable than they actually are.

When it comes to gift giving, here are some alternatives to big box stores and online shopping. Give gifts of experience or gifts of time. Consider the Presbyterian Giving Catalog for unique ideas that help others aroud the world. Share plants, consumables, or give something you’ve made yourself. Consider giving alternative gifts, contributing to a charity, or supporting Presbyterians for Earth Care. Host an alternative gift market at your church. There are a couple of companies that are good at supporting small businesses and treading gently, Uncommon Goods and Ten Thousand Villages. Consider alternatives to Amazon ordering. Pick and choose carefully from among those gifts that say they are green. Explore what can be done with seed paper, or make your own seed bombs.

Create a beautiful table with dishes, silverware, cloth napkins, and glassware. Buy local ingredients, consider plant-based opportunities for meals. Check out great blogs for delicious offerings, such as

Cookie and Kate, Oh She Glows, Love and Lemons, The First Mess, and more.

These pillars of creation care begin with making less, making less stuff, imposing fewer demands on the earth, spending less time buying things, while creating thoughtful, welcoming hospitality for friends and family.

Let us know what you do to entertain while treading gently on the earth.

SEPTEMBER WEBINAR

Green Amendments - Taking Our Power Back to Protect People & Earth

While we have many rights in the U.S., environmental rights is not among them. It’s time to empower communities to secure their environmental rights: to turn from a system of laws that accommodates pollution, to a system that prevents degradation through the passage of constitutional Green Amendments. Learn how Green Amendments – in place in 3 states with 20+ more on the way – are transforming environmental protection, environmental justice and helping to address the climate crisis. Learn what a Green Amendment is, what it does, how it works, what is happening in your state, and how you can be a leader in securing meaningful constitutional environmental rights for your community.

WEBINAR DATE: Monday, September 29, 2025
TIME: 7:30 pm EDT (6:30 CDT, 5:30 MDT, 4:30 PDT)
PRESENTER: Maya K van Rossum

SPEAKER BIO
Maya van Rossum is the Founder of Green Amendments For the Generations, a grassroots non-profit inspiring the national movement to secure constitutional recognition and protection of environmental rights in every state and ultimately at the federal level. Maya, a licensed attorney, is the author of numerous publications, including her book The Green Amendment, The People’s Fight For a Clean, Safe & Healthy Environment, now in its second edition, in which she coined and defined the term “Green Amendment”. Maya is also the Delaware Riverkeeper, leading the 4 state, watershed-based advocacy organization, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, for 30 years. She co-hosts Green Genes, an environmental podcast with her daughter. Since launching her Green Amendment movement, New York passed an amendment in 2021, proposals are advancing in 20 additional states, with half a dozen more on the way, and there is increasing use (including with Maya’s assistance) of the Green Amendments that now exist in Pennsylvania, New York and Montana.

CLICK HERE for Webinar Registration

CLICK HERE for Conference Info

Nominate Your

Eco-Justice Champion for 2025

We value your opinion and need your help! Do you know a young adult, 30 years old or younger, who connects their faith with creation and shows great potential to be a future leader for environmental justice? Or perhaps you know a more mature person who has spent their life acting and advocating for the beauty, integrity, and health of God’s creation. Maybe your congregation or faith organization operates in a sustainable manner and promotes being a good steward of God’s earth, both within and beyond its membership.

If one of these prompts brought an individual or a congregation/organization to your mind, now is the time to nominate them for a Presbyterians for Earth Care (PEC) Annual Earth Care Award. PEC presents three awards annually, two to individuals and one to an organization. These awards are given to individuals and groups whose work for the environment is especially praiseworthy and creative.

The William Gibson Eco-Justice Award honors an individual with a long history of being a good steward of the Earth, promotes sustainable practices for individuals or organizations, motivates and inspires others to care for God’s creation, and demonstrates care and concern for the sacred bond that exists between all things, living and nonliving.

The Restoring Creation Award honors a congregation or faith-based organization that demonstrates sustainable practices and models them for other organizations, operates in a manner that is consistent with good stewardship of God’s creation, partners with organizations to leverage resources for greater impact, and encourages continuous environmental efforts within the organization.

The Emerging Earth Care Leader Award honors an individual, age 18 to 30, who demonstrates sustainable practices and encourages others to care for God’s creation, expands Earth stewardship and sustainable practices through organizing, developing, and/or presenting one or more activities, projects, publications, or events, and incorporates care and concern for the sacred bond between all living things.

Visit the Awards page on the PEC website for more information, then nominate your eco-justice hero by October 15, 2025.

If you are a PEC member/donor, you are welcome to nominate an awardee. If you are not a member/donor and would like to make a nomination, you can join or renew your PEC membership now.

Volunteers are needed to make the decision about which qualified individual/congregation or organizations will receive the 2025 awards. If you would like to serve on the PEC Awards Committee, contact PEC Coordinator Mindy Hidenfelter at pec@presbyearthcare.org.

The deadline for submitting nominations for PEC Awards is October 15th.

CLICK HERE to Nominate an Award Recipient

How can we help you care for God’s creation? Drop us an email and let us know at presbyearthcare@gmail.com

Help us grow! Please let us know if there is anyone we should add to our list! Just reply to this email. Thank you!

Please help us to continue to assist individuals and churches in creation care work by donating to PEC through our website by CLICKING HERE. Thank you!