The women in the Benedictine Peacemakers Program, Erin, Emily, and Melissa, offered "A Recycling Refresh" for the sisters at the monastery. In their final weeks of their year-long experience at the monastery, they decided to leave one more gift. The sisters have been recycling and composting for some time but the young women saw an opportunity to offer some updated information and to make some strategic changes to facilitate their efforts. “It’s in line with the community’s corporate commitment,” they explained as they began. That commitment is “The Benedictine Sisters of Erie and Oblates commit to being a healing presence and a prophetic witness for peace and justice and to climate conscious living. We will decrease harmful patterns of consumerism and work with others to create systemic change needed to meaningfully address the climate crisis.”
They worked with sisters who have made more significant commitments to recycling, Sister Kathleen McCarthy with composting, Sister Marcia Sigler with recycling and upcycling, and Sister Joachim Frey with shredding and paper recycling, among others. “Sister Joachim is very careful with the shredding, especially about removing staples because bags of shredded paper are delivered to the Anna Shelter for use in animal cages. The staples can cause injury,” they said.
The presentation slides presented what kinds of materials can be recycled and what must be thrown in the garbage. See the PDF file of the slides here. If you frequent the monastery, it will help you support recycling there.
After the presentation, Emily, Melissa, and Erie strategically placed and labeled containers for various forms of recycling citing studies that show when the recycling containers are easy to access, use increases by up to 141%.
“We certainly want to do our part to reverse climate change,” said Sister Linda Romey, remarking that we must create change so that when these young women in their 20s are the age of the majority of the sisters (in their 80s and older) they still have a world.
