Caring for Creation

Oh God of all, at this time of our gradual awakening to the dangers we are imposing on our beautiful Earth, open the hearts and minds of all your children, that we may learn to nurture rather than destroy our planet.--Lorraine R. Schmitz, Earth Prayers from Around the World

If you’re like most Good Shepherd families, most of your waste goes into trash cans and recycling bins. Some of us use a compost bin, too. TerraCycle is an innovative, accessible, free way for you to reduce the amount of hard-to-recycle waste that Baltimore County must incinerate or bury in a landfill. You’ll help earn charity points that our youngest parishioners designate to organizations like the Maryland Food Bank and BlueWater Baltimore. These pennies add up. In ten years, we have earned nearly $2,000 in charity points and diverted several tons of waste from landfills.

The first step is to familiarize yourself with the list of accepted waste, posted in the parish hall hallway near our TerraCycle collection box. We partner with Park School’s third graders’ TerraCycle program to collect your granola bar wrappers, toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, mouthwash and dental floss containers, fruit pouches, and any empty make-up, hair, or skin care product containers. These are then sorted and sent to a factory to be pelletized and turned into new products like playground equipment and park benches.

Contact Ellen Hoitsma (ehoitsma@gmail.com) for any questions.

On some Sundays we offer up TerraCycle items as symbols of the many ways we are working to care for God’s creation.