Green Team

CJC’s Green Team meets the second Monday of each month to discuss and plan activities that promote environmental sustainability and resilience. We aim to promote action at the individual, congregational, interfaith, state and federal levels by reducing our environmental footprint, as well as by positively influencing policy.  We collaborate with Oakland Mills Interfaith Center congregations to make our facility more environmentally sustainable, and to provide educational opportunities for ourselves and the surrounding community.  Click here to attend our monthly meetings via Zoom.

To learn about the CJC Green Team’s work with our partner OMI congregation green teams, please go to the OMI Green Team website. There you’ll learn about our many activities on, in and near OMI, and register to be an active participant! Whether you like to garden, want to learn about electrification, solar energy, stormwater mitigation, native plants, plastic reduction and more, please check us out! We have activities for the entire family.

CLICK HERE to go to the OMI Green Team website 

UPCOMING CJC/OMI GREEN TEAM EVENTS

The OMI Green Team, consisting of the Green Teams of all the congregations within OMI, has been awarded THREE NEW GRANTS from the Howard County Office of Community Sustainability. All three grants build upon successful completion of last year’s grants. The first new grant is a follow-up to last year’s PREP grant and aids in making OMI more sustainable, including compost pick up, compostable dinnerware, environmental teachings, stormwater management and environmental education/webinars, among others.  It also host’s the OMI Green Spring Fling, which will be held again May 2024.  The other two new grants will address stormwater management deficiencies along the southern edge or office side of the building. New drainage pipes and trench drains will direct water to the new stormwater retention basin located south of the existing one. Once we obtain funding for the already designed upper parking lot retention basin construction, we at OMI will have state-of-the-art stormwater retention and management throughout the entire property.

We are GRATEFUL for volunteers from within and outside the OMI community who have helped us establish our many successful programs.  With our additional grants, the OMI Green Team is in need of many more. We are looking for folks to help with the website, publicity, environmental teachings within the OMI community and nearby schools, stormwater practices, environmental cleanup, eliminating non compostables within OMI, as well as gardening and plant maintenance.  We have master gardeners who can teach you if you do not already know how!

We have activities the 1^st and 3^rd Sunday of most months (and other days as needed) you can contact us at volunteeratomigreenteam@gmail.com for more information.  We are open to folks of all ages; middle schoolers or below must be accompanied by a parent.  Our Youth Green Team which meets on the first Sunday of the month offers experiences for all ages 2 and up.  More info at www.omigreenteam.org

GREEN TEAM REFLECTIONS

From Aloha to Elul

by Bonnie Sorak

What a blessing to spend my family vacation in Hawaii this year. Whenever I prepare for a trip, if there is a James Mitchner book about our destination, I like to read it as a way to acquaint myself with where we’re going. I realize that his books are historical fiction with dated concepts, but I still find them as a fun and engaging way to become familiar with an area. So I read “Hawaii”. What a tale!

Two things stood out to me:

1. First, that literally everything came to these volcanic islands from somewhere else: the people, the plants, the animals.
2. And second, the deeper, richer meaning of the the term “Aloha” (/əˈloʊhɑː/ ə-LOH-hah, Hawaiian: [əˈlohə]). While this term is commonly used as a greeting, its broader meaning is “love, affection, peace, compassion, and mercy.” And for Native Hawaiians, aloha has deeper cultural and spiritual significance; it defines a force that holds together existence. Native Hawaiian culture holds a reverence for life and belief in the interconnectedness of the natural world.

As my family and I embarked on our very first hike to a beautiful waterfall in the rainforest, what struck me was that we were surrounded by non-native and “invasive species” that were choking out the native trees that had been growing there for centuries. Sigh. And despite the island’s attempts to keep out any more non-natives, it has been and continues to be a struggle to keep out these invaders and preserve the native ecosystems. 

I expected an island state to have a deep commitment to sustainability. So I was a bit disappointed when we first visited legendary Waikiki Beach and found almost no attempt to sort recycling at trash collection sites. When I was in Barcelona, Spain late last year, I learned that they do an incredible job of sorting trash, so I figured a place like Hawaii would have at least a similar approach to trash reduction. 

On a more positive note, I did learn about the “Reef Friendly” sunscreen required on all the islands (and in my mind should be required everywhere since all water is connected). Hawaii banned the sale of sunscreens with certain common ingredients that harm corals. Did you know we have coral and reefs, such as whip corals and oyster reefs, in the Chesapeake? So this is a practice we could all easily adopt to protect all kinds of reef habitat!

Another interesting discovery was the low-impact features in the Hilo house we stayed in near Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, such as no air conditioning, but it was not needed with the mild Hawaiian climate. The water heater was solar powered and all of the runoff from the roof was captured in a huge cistern, treated, and then used in the house since there was no well, public water, or sewer. Of course, in a rainforest, there is no need to worry about drought, especially during the rainy season. 

The last hike of our trip took us across a lava field, where hot lava once scorched everything in its path. You might think nothing could survive in this vast lava desert, but miraculously, life finds a way, with plants growing in cracks and crevices — a beautiful reminder of nature’s resilience and renewal that we can also find within ourselves.

As summer draws to a close and the Jewish month of Elul (the 6th month in the Jewish calendar) begins, I start preparing for the approaching High Holidays, or the Days of Awe, approaching this fall. Thus begins a time for reflection and introspection. We begin to think of “t’shuvah” or repentance for the wrongs we have done to both people and our beloved planet. For this reflective period, my co-worker Mollie has suggested this lovely book, Earth Etudes for Elul by Katy Z. Allen. The book’s description says: “Elul is the time for us to begin to make atonement for the things we wish we had or hadn’t done, and to renew ourselves, to do all we can to get ourselves to change. To help you on this journey, you will find in this volume a series of reflections for the month of Elul, divrei Earth—teachings that connect Earth and Torah.  Use this text to help you expand your own reflections about t’shuvah…” 

We as a people can always strive to learn from each other, recognize our interdependence, and do better.

RESOURCES

 PLEASE CLICK HERE to view slides of Jewish Texts and the Environment and Climate Change from Yom Kippur 2021 Discussion Group

REDUCE, REUSE & RECYCLE
We are all inundated with trash. Click here for suggestions which can help you minimize your impact on our fragile environment.