Recycling and free water bottle refills success at 65th annual Black Walnut Festival

Sorting and de-capping volunteers show off 12 bags of de-capped plastic water bottles, two bags of aluminum cans, and  10 gallons of glass bottles: Emma Clemons, Mike and Janice Dunne, Dodie Parkhurst, Michelle Moniz, Hadassa Griffin, Diedre Senecal, Pastor Daniel Na, Yehoshua Griffin, and Cheryl Marcum. --Contributed by Cheryl Y. Marcum

Thanks to the Stockton United Methodist Church (SUMC) Go Green Team’s annual recycling service, Black Walnut Festival-goers kept over 14 (42-gallon-sized) bags of recyclable waste out of the landfill: twelve bags of de-capped plastic bottles, two bags of aluminum cans, and about 10 gallons of glass bottles.

During the three-day festival, 24 Go Green Team members and friends set out 20 recycling units across the park. They monitored them, hauled them and the bags of bottles and cans back to church, then sorted and de-capped the collection. They deposited the aluminum cans in the United Methodist Men’s recycling barrels in the SUMC parking lot and delivered the plastic and glass to the city recycling center.

This year, for the first time, they experimented to reduce the volume of plastic water bottles they haul out of the park by offering a free water bottle refill station at the SUMC booth. Festival-goers refilled water bottles with 20 gallons of free, cold, filtered water. A successful new green initiative!

SUMC Creation Care Ministry leader Cheryl Marcum mused about this free three-day public service act of discipleship. “As people made in God’s image, whom God gave the job of tending his good creation, we are committed to reducing our consumption and the amount of trash we generate daily. Imagine the good land buried under our mountains of trash—including toxins lethal to creation—lamenting to God, as written in Jeremiah 12:10-11. ‘Foreign, scavenging shepherds will loot and trample my fields, turn my beautiful, well-cared-for fields into vacant lots of tin cans and thistles. They leave them littered with junk—a ruined land, a land in lament. The whole countryside is a wasteland, and no one will really care.’ (The Message Bible) Let’s act like we are made in God’s image and choose to consume less and recycle more. When we recycle, we imitate God’s creation design.”

The Go Green Team is honored to support the Stockton Sertoma Club by offering festival-goers an opportunity to recycle and refill water bottles.

The Go Green Team welcomes others in the community who would like to help with this ministry.