(Chicago, Illinois) - Faith leaders across eight Great Lakes states are urging their members to participate in an Earth Day 2008 challenge to collect one million tons of electronics and more than one million pills because trust is needed between all people to stop "an environmental crisis."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge has moved into high gear more than 100 projects involving hundreds of communities are collecting pharmaceuticals, electronics and household poisons.
An EPA grant to the non-profit interfaith Earth Healing Initiative (EHI) is mobilizing religious communities in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania.
A Lutheran Bishop who has participated in interfaith Earth Day recycling projects for three years in a row encourages people of all faiths to get involved and help protect the environment.
"We are in an environmental crisis in many ways," said Lutheran Bishop Thomas A. Skrenes of the Northern Great Lakes Synod (NGLS) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). "The Great Lakes watershed is really kind of a mother to all of us here in the populated areas of the upper Midwest."
Interfaith environment projects like the EPA Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge will help ensure a better future for all humans, Skrenes said, adding "sometimes its relationships and trusting each other that really count in environmental work."
"The culture, the society and the environment are now connecting in some fantastic new ways to build relationships between people," Skrenes said. "We are building trust along and across denominational lines, in the Christian communities and into the wider faith communities of the whole country."
The EHI is "a coalition and partnership of churches, synagogues and other faith traditions joining together and sharing their projects and resources to heal, protect and defend the environment," said founder Rev. Jon Magnuson of Marquette, Michigan.
Bishop Skrenes hopes everyone across the Great Lakes Basin will participate in their local project.
Saying "it's not your grandfather's environment movement anymore," Skrenes said that environmental work is now more mainstream and no longer "an obscure thing for a certain group of people" unlike 40 years ago when he was in high school "and I dare say some of my relatives said it was kind of a hippie movement."
"The church is called to bring people together to be part of the healing," Skrenes said.
"This interfaith earth healing effort is really a great gift that has been given to all of us," Skrenes said. "It is our calling and our responsibility to assist in renewal and rebuilding - it's God's work and it's the work of God's people."
Examples of established interfaith organizations that are assisting the EHI include the University of Minnesota Lutheran Campus Ministry, the Arrowhead Interfaith Council in Duluth, the Marquette University Ministry outlets in Milwaukee, several Catholic interfaith groups and the office of Ecumenical Formation and Inter-Religious Relations at the ELCA.
While some of the projects have been running all month or during Earth Week, the bulk of the events will be held either this Saturday, April 19 or next Saturday, April 26. Collections, rules, times and dates vary from city to city.
The EHI is one of numerous environment projects founded by the non-profit Cedar Tree Institute in Marquette, Michigan including the Earth Keepers, known for removing more than 370 tons of e-waste, pharmaceuticals and household hazardous waste during three Earth Day clean sweeps across the Upper Peninsula.
Bishop Skrenes is among the faith leaders who have signed the northern Michigan Earth Keeper Covenant pledging to actively participate in environment projects, build bridges with other faiths, and reach out to Native American tribes.
The ongoing Earth Keeper project involves the congregations of over 150 churches and temples representing ten faith communities: Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist Church, Unitarian Universalist, Bahá'í, Jewish, Zen Buddhist and the Religious Society of Friends commonly known as the Quakers. The EHI is coordinating the same relationships with religious communities across the Great Lakes and beyond.
"People of many spiritual dimensions resonate to this work," Skrenes said. "This is a good effort for all of us to be involved with."
"This is about the environment, this is about cleaning up and making things new again and restoring things to the ways they once were and can be," Skrenes said.
"People who are spiritual reflect upon and think about creation," Skrenes said. "We think about the lakes and the streams and the forest and all of the rest that God has produced."
The 2008 EPA challenge collection sites include large cities and surrounding areas like Chicago, Milwaukee and Cleveland.
Illinois: Alton, Beecher, Bellwood, Bolingbrook, Carol Stream, Channahon, Chicago, Elk Grove Village, Elmhurst, Glenview, Joliet, Lockport, Lombard, Mount Prospect, Northbrook, Park Ridge, Romeoville, Shorewood, Villa Park, West Chicago, Wheaton, Woodstock
Indiana: Columbia City, Hammond, Knox, LaPorte, Fort Wayne, Rushville, Valparaiso
Michigan: Bay City (two events), Benton Harbor, Bloomfield Hills, Dearborn Heights, East Lansing, Farmington Hills, Goodells, Grand Rapids (two events) Harbor Springs, Lansing, Midland, Monroe, Royal Oaks, Sault Ste. Marie, Southfield, Traverse City
Minnesota: Blaine, Brooklyn Park, Duluth, Eagan, Eden Prairie, Madison, Maple Grove, New Ulm, Saint Cloud, Shakopee, St. Louis Park, St. Paul
New York: Brockport, Buffalo, Fredonia, Rochester (two events), Syracuse (two events).
Ohio: Cleveland, Grove City, Kent, Perrysburg, Sandusky, Springfield, Toledo, Warren
Pennsylvania: Erie, Lancaster
Wisconsin: Appleton, Brillion, Chilton, Crandon, Green Bay, Keshena (Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and College of Menominee Nation), Manitowoc, Milwaukee (two events), New Holstein, Oshkosh, Plover (two events), Racine, Superior, Waupaca.
The EHI works in collaboration with the EPA and other government and non-government organizations, said Magnuson, executive director of the Cedar Tree Institute
