• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Joint Public Issues Team

Churches working for peace and justice

  • Home Page
  • Who We Are
    • Six hopes for society
  • Issues
    • Economy
      • Tax Justice
      • Reset The Debt
      • Living Wage
    • Environment
      • Net Zero In My Neighbourhood
    • Poverty and Inequality
      • The Cost of Living Crisis
      • Universal Credit
      • Truth and Lies
      • Enough
      • Rethink Sanctions
      • Faith in Foodbanks
      • Housing and Homelessness
    • Asylum and Migration
      • Refugees
      • End Hostility
      • The Asylum System
    • Peacemaking
      • The Arms Trade
      • Nuclear Weapons
      • Drones
      • Peacemaking resources
    • Politics and Elections
      • Elections
      • Meet Your MP
      • Art of the Possible
      • Brexit
    • Other Issues
      • International Development
      • Modern Slavery and Exploitation
        • Forced labour in fashion
  • Get Involved
    • JPIT Conference 2022
    • Newsletter
    • Events
    • Walking with Micah
  • Resources
    • Advent
    • 10 Minutes on… podcast
    • Politics in the Pulpit?
    • Stay and Pray
    • Season of Creation
    • Prayers
    • Public Issues Calendar
    • Poetry
    • Small Group Resources
  • Blog

Drastic about Plastic

Blog, Environment · 29 March, 2018

The End Of The Fast Is But A Beginning!

Did you give up anything for Lent?  And if so, what difference has it made?

In the past I’ve given up various luxuries – especially in the food and drink department.  I’ve committed myself to spiritual renewal through bible-study, prayer and reflection.  I’ve supported a number of charitable causes.  With much less success, I’ve vowed to increase my physical activity.  They say the body is a temple – but mine has failed many a quinquennial!

And those ‘fasts’ have been laudable and valuable to me at the time.  However, what longer-lasting effects they may have had is open to serious question.

A Plastic Fast For Lent

This year our congregation at Nailsea Methodist Church embarked on a fast with a difference.  We have tried to give up plastic for Lent!

The roots of our campaign lay in the growing unease we all share about the ubiquity and durability of plastic.  The images of Blue Planet II before Christmas, of oceans of plastic waste and an albatross feeding plastic to its chick, created something of a shock-wave in the UK.  Inspired by the work of the Transition Town group in Evesham we decided to follow their excellent example and adopted their slogan: It’s time to get drastic about plastic!

Over the Lent period, the church has adopted a different focus each week.  Every Sunday I have bounded up to the lectern.  We have a new litany:  ‘It’s time to get drastic’ I would call.  And the congregation would echo: ‘About Plastic!’  And then I would set out the new objective for the week e.g. plastic milk bottles, unrecyclable black plastic, fruit and veg unnecessarily covered in plastic etc.  Over the six weeks each new challenge has been added to the previous one to attempt to build a sense of conscience about the issue and to reduce our consumption.

It has led to some educational and amusing encounters.  Bumping into our Children’s Worker in the supermarket suddenly became a moment of mutual scrutiny: how much plastic was in our respective trollies?!  We laughed as we found ourselves both caught out in breaking the plastic fast.  But it also added to our determination to improve our record on avoiding as much of the stuff as we possibly could.

The Fast Is Not Just For Lent

I can understand that some Christians may object that this approach is guilty of missing the point about the real meaning of Lent and, indeed, of Easter.  Surely Lenten observance needs to be more nearly connected to the journey of the suffering servant?  I am entirely in sympathy with that viewpoint.  But the issue of plastic relates to wider questions about the future of our planet and the human race – interrelated parts of the created world which Christ has redeemed and of which we are stewards.  So I am unapologetic about latching this vital issue of social responsibility to the great Christian themes of Lent and Easter itself.

With previous fasts, Easter has come as a blessed release from the obligations of Lent.  However unlike all those previous Lenten fasts, this fast is one which must not only continue but deepen through the coming months.  As I write, the Government’s Foresight Future of the Sea Report has just been published, predicting plastic waste in our oceans will treble in the next ten years.  Something must be done.  And it needs to start with me.

Mark Mallett is a retired Headteacher and life-long Methodist, married to the Rev Deborah Mallett, Minister of Backwell and Nailsea Methodist Churches.

Filed Under: Blog, Environment

Previous Post: « Reflecting on the JPIT Internship
Next Post: Universal Credit: DWP tries to lie its way out of trouble »

Primary Sidebar

Search

Recent Posts

  • JPIT’s Review of 2022
  • What does Government Support for Asylum Seekers really provide?
  • God with Us – the Refugees of Calais and Dunkirk
  • How can we respond to COP27?
  • Statement on the conclusion of the COP27 Climate Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
  • COP27 – what should we be looking for?
  • “He has filled the hungry with good things” – What we need from the Autumn Budget
  • What are the stories we should tell about the humanitarian crisis at Manston Airport Asylum centre?
  • How can we be sure that the products we buy are not the result of modern slavery?
  • Why I hate Warm Banks (and why my church is opening one)
  • How does our theology call us to challenge Poverty?
  • Introducing Alfie
  • Biden says nuclear risk is the highest since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
  • Churches respond to risk to benefit levels
  • Briefing on the ‘Mini Budget’ for the Enough to Live group
  • Introducing Hazel
  • Introducing Hannah
  • An energy cap announcement in three parts: the good, the absent and the ugly
  • Afghanistan and the UK – One Year On from the Fall Of Kabul
  • Inflation, interest rates and the poorest

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter

Footer

Follow us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Quick links

Stay and Pray
Politics in the Pulpit
Faith in Politics podcast
Public Issues Calendar
Useful Links

Our work

About Us
Meet the Team
Join the Team 
Internship
Our Newsletter

Contact us

25 Marylebone Road
London NW1 5JR

Tel: 020 7916 8632

enquiries@jpit.uk

Copyright © 2023 · Showcase Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in