Eco Church

Concern for nature and the environment isn't something new to the people of Frome, and our congregation was enthusiastic about working for an Eco Church award. We had to complete an online 'Eco Survey', answering questions on five key areas of church life:

Worship and teaching
Management of church buildings
Management of church land
Community and global engagement
Lifestyle

We are delighted to say that at the end of it we found we had achieved the Silver Eco Church Award.

To encourage sustainability and biodiversity in our churchyard we installed a composting area, a bug hotel, a well stocked bird-feeding station and a bird box. Being a town centre church and closed churchyard, we are somewhat limited in what we can reasonably do, but the restricted access North Churchyard affords us greater flexibility. There has been a churchyard on our site for several hundreds of years and Somerset Botany Group visited our churchyard and helped us to identify the plant species we have. You can see the full list by clicking here

As part of our Eco Church audit we looked at twinning the St John’s toilet with a school in Zambia via Tear Fund’s Toilet Twinning programme and we are twinned with a school block in Chimbilwa, Southern Zambia – about 120 miles south-west of the capital, Lusaka.

Individuals can twin their toilets too and several of our congregation have done this.

Go to toilettwinning.org

You can find out more about Eco Church initiatives at:
https://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk/

and at

https://www.bathandwells.org.uk/faithandmission/environment/

where a copy of the Diocesan Environment Policy can also be seen.

Wilder Churches

Wilder Churches began in March 2021 as a partnership initiative between Somerset Wildlife Trust and the Diocese of Bath and Wells. The initiative aims to support communities to get to know the wildlife in their local churchyard, other church land or burial ground and work together to find ways to increase the value of these special places for wildlife. We have benefitted from attending a number of their workshops. For more information go to https://www.somersetwildlife.org/events/wilder-churches