Marquette, Michigan - The Upper Peninsula Earth Keepers announced several projects for the next year as they received the Michigan Sierra Club prestigious White Pine Award for past projects that included recycling hundreds of tons of hazardous waste, energy conservation programs and the protection of Lake Superior.
Numerous Earth Keeper Initiative (EKI) faith leaders, volunteers and student members accepted the award on Nov. 13, 2008 at a meeting of the Sierra Club U.P. Group.
"The White Pine Award is intended to recognize a group outside of the Sierra Club which has been doing things to help protect the environment," said Dr. Jon Rebers, chair of the Sierra Club Central U.P. Group.
The U.P. Earth Keepers, involving the congregations of over 150 U.P. churches and temples, held three annual Earth Day collections at dozens of sites across northern Michigan that removed almost 370 tons of household hazardous waste from the environment.
"Many of you here in town will have heard about the good work the Earth Keepers," Rebers said.
The Earth Keepers collected over one ton of pharmaceuticals and $500,000 in narcotics in 2007; over 320 tons of computers, related equipment and televisions in 2006; and about 45 tons of household hazardous waste like pesticides, herbicides, oil-based paint and car batteries. Most of the waste turned in by the public at free collections sites was recycled and the rest was properly destroyed following U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.
The Earth Keepers held a 2007 energy summit that helped hundreds of Michigan homes and businesses become energy efficient, and helped organize classical musicians from across the Great Lakes to form the Boreal Chamber Symphony for a Lake Superior Day 2007 concert in Marquette that raised funds to protect the world's largest body of freshwater.
"We are moving into our fifth year," said Rev. Jon Magnuson, co-founder and executive director of the non-profit Cedar Tree Institute.
The EKI is sponsored by the Cedar Tree Institute, Superior Watershed Partnership, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and 10 faith communities: Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist Church, Unitarian Universalist, Baha'i, Jewish, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and Zen Buddhist.
Partners include the EPA and Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.
The faith community members are "trying to honor the creation by preserving it," said Dr. Rodney Clarken, a Baha'i. "One of the Baha'i principles is that each human being is entrusted and is in some way the image of God, just as creation is in some ways the image of god. We can not be pure and holy unless somehow our environment is pure and holy."
The leader of a Marquette Zen Buddhist temple said "your environment is in trouble right now."
"Zen Buddhists tend to believe in the oneness of all - you are part of your environment - that is absolutely inescapable," said Rev. Tesshin Paul Lehmberg, head priest of Lake Superior Zendo.
Member Nancy Irish said her favorite Earth Keeper project is the "Adopt a Watershed" program.
"We've had a number of campouts for kids," said Irish, a representative of the Marquette Unitarian Universalist congregation. "There is nothing more wonderful than facilitating the meeting of the natural world with children because children protect what they love and they love what they know."
The newest EKI member said the interfaith effort "fits in well with that basic tie between your theology and you way of living."
"One of the Quaker basic testimonies is the simplicity of living and of course this ties well into that (the Earth Keeper Convenant)," said David McCowen of Lake Superior Friends (Quakers).
The Superior Watershed Partnership and the Cedar Tree Institute are non-profits who "facilitate what happens with the Earth Keepers," said watershed partnership representative Natasha Koss.
The Northern Michigan University EarthKeeper (NMU EK) Student Team has several projects planned in the next few months.
Goals include an "Eco-Christmas Initiative," said Sarah Swanson, NMU EK project director. "We are going to encourage people to be more eco-conscious when they are purchasing gifts for family and friends over the holidays."
"We also plan to recycle some televisions in February, now that they are switching to the different form of (high definition) television," she said. "We will be planting a bunch of trees on Earth Day" and "organize some community gardens which will be planted on church properties and any of the faith community properties."
People have "an inescapable relationship with their environment" and that is connected to other social issues, said Ben Scheelk, NMU EK student team project coordinator from the Student Leader Fellowship Program.
Call Greg
906-401-0109
earthkeeper@charter.net
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