Eco Tips Booklet
We have put together a collection of all the tips published on our bulletins over the years which you can view and download here.
Eco Church Lifestyle Audit 2025
Care for creation has been a fundamental part of God’s plan for us and at St. Thomas’ we have demonstrated our commitment to care for the environment by joining the Eco Church accreditation scheme, as detailed below. We are ‘Going for Gold’ and are committed to undertaking an annual lifestyle audit to review our personal approach to creation care. Our Autumn 2025 audit has now closed and we have collated the results which you can find here. We intend to issue the survey again in six months to measure improvements in our lifestyle.
If you want to make changes to your Eco credentials, some resources to help you can be found here:
Carbon Footprint Calculator
Travel
Fairtrade Food
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Ethical Finances
Thank you for getting involved! The Eco Team
We are an Eco Church!
St. Thomas’ were delighted to have been awarded with the A Rocha Bronze Eco Award and the A Rocha Silver Eco Award in 2022 and you can see our plaques inside the church.. Eco Church is A Rocha’s UK award scheme for churches who want to show that the Gospel is good news for God’s earth. Their aim is to inspire individuals and families, equip churches and church leaders, build partnerships and manage land for nature and people.
The scheme is divided into five separate sections: Worship and teaching; Management of church buildings; Management of church land; Community and global engagement; and Lifestyle. Thus in all areas of church life we are encouraged to evaluate our practice in helping to sustain the environment and reduce our carbon footprint.
- We have had some quick wins; using recyled or donated cupboards and settees
- Some incidental wins: installing a smart screen has meant a huge reduction in the use of paper for service sheets
- Some IT wins: using email and Whatsapp messages has reduced our use of paper
- Some hard-won wins: digging out our wildflower bed in the churchyard
- Some fortunate wins: a donation to place benches in the churchyard to encourage a quiet space to contemplate nature
Latest news
As we work twards the Gold award there is a renewed and deeper emphasis on working with our wider neighbours and partners. We are continung to work with our friends from the Walton Lea Partnership, who have planted up our vegetable plot. There is also a small herb garden, bee watering station and flowers selected to attract pollinators. Pleasingly the PCC have agreed a donation to the Ripple Africa Charity Scheme; we have twinned our garden and this supports life-saving training to farmers in rural Africa to grow their families out of poverty.
Our diocesan HQ in nearby Daresbury has, after a brief gap, found a company who will collect used candle stubs and used tealights. There is a bin for tealights and a collection for used larger candles within the church.
We are pleased to support Stockton Heath Repair Cafe who will initially meet every third Saturday in the month in our church hall. Eventually we hope to welcome them into the new community space within the church if our major works bid with the Heritage Lottery Fund reaches fruition.
St. Thomas’ Church has partnered with Stockton Heath Parish Council, who have kindly funded a blister strip recycling scheme which means the local community can use our church as a recycling collection point. It has proved to be highly successful and drawn many visitors into the church.
Working with WASH (Wild About Stockton Heath) and Stockton Heath Primary School we are working to protect and increase the hedgehog population of the village. Funded through a Co-op grant we have made hedgehog houses and feeding stations. Residents who notice a hedgehog are asked to record the sighting on the WASH website.
http://wildaboutstocktonheath.org.uk/our-hedgehog-project/
Plans are being made for an Eco Fair on Saturday 26th September in the church hall so please reserve the date – the theme will be Reuse, Recycle, Repair.
If you would like to take a more active role in supporting our ‘Going for Gold’ please contact our Eco representative Sheila Barton through the website contact form.
St. Thomas’ is a Fairtrade church, which means that we try as far as possible to use fairly traded items such as tea, coffee and sugar. We encourage the use of Fairtrade items in all church events There is now a much wider range of products available and we encourage our church members to ask for Fairtrade items when shopping, as availability is led by customer demand. Using Fairtrade items makes a real difference to the lives of many in the developing world.