One of our churches in the Ripon area has recently added another environmental award to their collection.
St Mary the Virgin in Ingleton, at the heart of the Yorkshire Dales, earned their Silver Eco Church Award at the end of 2020.
The church has been caring for God’s creation for many years, achieving Eco-Congregation awards in 2011 and 2014, and after the scheme was transformed into Eco Church, they attained a Bronze award in 2017.
“We have been skating around the edge of a silver award for a couple of years,” said Parish Environment Officer Andy Ive, “and with the new roof and insulation we finally relooked at the award criteria and saw we were within the requirements.”
The £170,000 reroofing project was financed largely through grant funding and as well as tile replacement, to keep the church watertight, the maximum level of insulation has been added which is helping to reduce heating needs.
While this major project was a key contribution to the buildings section of the Eco Church award, the church has taken a wide range of other simpler actions as part of integrating environmental mission into their everyday church life.
These include replacing the church light bulbs with LEDs, running a pop-up pantry food bank during lockdown, keeping a live Christmas tree in the churchyard for annual use and deciding not to call in the mole catcher for the churchyard moles. 
The team works across the five churches in the Ingleborough Benefice and includes the Revd Nick Trenholme, the Revd Anne Russel and Timothy Fox.
They are now keen to work towards a Gold Eco Church award.
They are about to engage on a Bible study series based on Ruth Valerio’s highly recommended book, ‘Say Yes to Life’.
“It’s all about getting people involved in taking the environment seriously,” said Andy.
“Even in lockdown the congregation has been keeping up our environmental standards, with the Churchyard being the next item on the agenda with a hedgehog house made of ecobricks being planned along with some fruit trees, so watch this space.”