Our churches are committed to the 5th Mark of Mission: "To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth."

We recognise the climate crisis we are in and we have made a commitment to look at our life as church communities and as individuals and see where we can make a difference. We have an OVMC Environment Group that meets regularly to learn, share information and good practice and to challenge each other in our environmental efforts.

How we show our care in word and action

A foundation in prayer

Sometimes the problems can feel overwhelming and the issues too big. How can we make a difference? As Christians we believe we make a difference through our prayers and we meet every week to pray intentionally for our environment.

Auditing our churches

All of our churches have undertaken the A Rocha Eco Church audit. Ottery St Mary Parish Church has a bronze award and Alfington Church has a silver award.

While our historical church buildings are extremely difficult to make energy efficient we have shown our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint by using green tariffs wherever possible and at Ottery St Mary Parish Church we recently upgraded all our lights to LEDs through the Shine a Light Project.

We encourage people to consider their personal lifestyle choices and we commend the 4 Rs: Resist, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

What are we doing to reduce our impact on the earth?

Our churches use a variety of ways to reduce their carbon footprint. For more information on these and on the OVMC Environment Group, please contact the Parish Administrator.

  • Operate lift share schemes to bring people to church
  • Use a congregational Christmas card
  • Use environmentally friendly cleaning products
  • Twin their toilets through the Toilet Twinning Scheme
  • Support environmental charities
  • Avoid the use of disposables when catering
  • Encourage people to engage with politicians on environmental issues
  • Use recycled paper
  • Reduce paper dependence in our services
  • Recycling points for paper and candles

Increasing space for wildlife

We have churchyards at Ottery St Mary Parish Church and Alfington, both of which are managed sensitively to increase biodiversity.

Alfington churchyard has been “on the wild side” for many years strimming the grass in late spring and early autumn only and cutting the hedges once a year. The churchyard has a bug hotel, a pond, a dry hedge, log benches, and compost bins. Alfington has a wonderful array of snowdrops in early spring and the community is invited to a snowdrop weekend to enjoy the beauty of the space.

Ottery churchyard is a more formal green space and can’t be left quite as wild as Alfington. However three areas are left un-mowed and wild flowers are beginning to appear. In 2025 we installed swift boxes in Ottery church tower and use a swift caller to encourage pairs to nest.

Getting more organised

At the end of 2024 Ottery and Alfington churchyards were surveyed by Kelvin Boot, a local naturalist, science writer and who assists the Exeter Diocese Environmental Advisor. Kelvin made many suggestions about how we might improve our green spaces and develop five year management plans.

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