The Church is Greener on the Other Side

Westwinds has been on a quest to go green for some time now.

One of our first steps was to place recycling spots throughout the church for paper and cans and such.

We poured a concrete pad and offered the County a spot to host a recycling center for the whole community on our property—cardboard, paper, glass, cans, etc.

We cut back on the size of our printed bulletin “The Draft” and did away with countless inserts.

We have not allowed the copying and/or distribution of fliers to promote events at Westwinds but have relied on Community Email, the screens, and now Twitter.

In our continuing effort to go green at Westwinds, we are making a couple of significant changes this week.

Now . . .

We have been announcing it for weeks and finally . . . we are doing away with coffee cups.

There is still plenty of free coffee to go around but we will not be providing paper cups or plastic lids any longer. This is true of cups for water as well.

BYOM is in full-swing. Bring your own mug, and store it in the giant coffee mug steel cupboard in the lobby behind the coffee bar. If you forget or you are new and aren’t aware of the “rules,” Westwinds has a ton of mugs to loan for the day. When you are done, drop off you mug in the bins provided and our mug crew will put it in the dishwasher for you. Simple as that.

Soon, we will receive a new shipment of Westwinds travel mugs that will be for sale.

“Beverage counters” with ice cold and/or hot purified water are being installed near the coffee bar. Since there are no cups this weekend, mugs will be used for water until we get our cool new refillable water bottles with the Westwinds logo.

We have also transitioned this week to cream carafes rather than the tiny little wasteful cream packets that also cause a huge mess.

A big change? Yeah, you could say so.

Biggby coffee of Jackson has been donating our coffee for the last few months. I talked to Brandon, one of the owners about our decision to go green which impacts them because of the free advertisement they were getting with the paper cups with their logo on them. Brandon could not be more pleased. He was happy for the change and said he was proud to be part of Westwinds. Thank you Biggby!

I am so proud of our church.

Side benefit? We will save the hassle of dumping approximately 10 industrial-size garbage bags full of cups on Sundays. No joke. We are also saving a ton of money in paper product and “convenient” creams.

The earth is worth it.
Our kids are worth it.
The community is worth it.
The future is worth it.
The example is worth it.
God is worth it.