Evangelizing Ecological Awareness Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s efforts to reduce waste

By Katie Giffin

In 2015, Pope Francis wrote his second encyclical, titled Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home, advising humankind to take care of the planet and, as a result, its most vulnerable inhabitants. This call to action from the pope inspired the start of the zero waste efforts at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Grove City.

The Franklin County landfill is only about five miles south of the church’s campus, which means for Our Lady of Perpetual Help, reducing waste is an issue close to home. This inspired the formation of the Creation Care Council under the vision of Sister Nancy Miller in 2015.

“Most of the work for me early on was attending (Council) meetings and learning what the Creation Care Coun- cil was about, where they were headed, and where they had been in the year prior to me joining,” says Mark Sigrist, Creation Care Council member.

The early monthly meetings were about defining “creation care” and what it meant to be a good steward of the earth by reducing waste and focusing on composting.

After Sigrist joined, the group soon started planning how they could impact local events like Lenten Fish Fries, Parish Feast Days and the Our Lady Summer Festival.

“Our goal was to divert waste generated from these events away from the landfill in a very visible way to our guests,” Sigrist says. “In other words, demonstrate and teach our guests and workers in a practical way how we can all do better in terms of minimizing our landfill footprint.”

To demonstrate these practical changes, the Creation Care Council focused its efforts on the Our Lady Summer Festival, which takes place on the parish grounds on Broadway. The festival is a two-night event that attracts around 4,000 people per night with food trucks, carnival rides, activities and live music. But in order to make the event a “no-waste” event, the food truck vendors had to be on board.

“We wanted to compost food scraps and food truck and carnival dinnerware. We needed their support and cooperation to use compostable dinnerware, and to also not use Styrofoam,” Sigrist says.

In addition to working with the food trucks, the Creation Care Council assigned teams of volunteers to every waste station to make sure each item got placed in the correct bin – recyclable or compostable.

To supply the funds for the collection stations and the marketing materials needed to advertise the event, Sigrist applied for a grant from the Solid Waste

Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO). This grant was instrumental in the event’s success.

The financial support combined with the number of volunteers resulted in a successful no-waste festival that would continue for the following two years.

“To hold a community festival for the entire city and … focus on recycling and composting for those two nights … is extremely important,” Sigrist says. “It shows that you can throw a party and still take care of God’s creation. And we all have a personal responsibility to take care of God’s creation.”

However, in the wake of COVID-19 in 2020, the program’s growth came to a halt.

This temporary setback would not stop the team, however, from focusing on new efforts.

In 2021, Frea, who had been a member of the group since 2015, took over as lead coordinator when Miller stepped down. With a new coordinator came a new group name: the Laudato si’ Action Team. Under this new name, the group addresses more than just the zero-waste efforts and is now expanding to look at other issues as well.

“We have really gone back and taken a look at the encyclical and really broadened our scope to moving beyond just care for creation and care for the poor. We are looking at all sorts of eco issues like eco-spirituality and ecological economics,” Frea says.

Frea hopes the efforts of the Laudato Si’ Action Team will reach more members of the community as the program continues to grow.

“We see the entire Grove City community as our parish boundaries and so

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(we support) things like … the community-based compost program,” Frea says. “We hope to continue evangelizing the need to reuse, recycle, repurpose and compost.”

While the Action Team largely focuses on education and expanding awareness of the encyclical, the group is also looking at clean energy and solar projects with the goal of engaging a younger audience in the future.

“It’s time for us all to pull together and start taking care of our earth, so there is something worth handing on (to the younger generation),” Frea says.

While getting involved looks different for everyone, Frea believes every amount counts.

“Read the encyclical, join a creation care committee at your local faith institution and do something – even if it’s small – to recycle, repurpose, reuse or compost,” Frea says.

Katie Giffin is a contributing writer for CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@ cityscenemediagroup.com.

By Aaron Gilliam