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SALEM - The Salem First Presbyterian Church, 436 E. Second St., will host a celebration of Earth Sunday during the 10:30 a.m. service Sunday. The congregation will be celebrating Earth Sunday by recognizing the gift of pollinators as part of God's Creation. The theme of the service will be "What's the Buzz all About? Presbyterians Promoting Pollinators." The Rev. Dan Schomer will preach and there will be special music by the Haviland Choir, and the children from the Presbyterian Preschool. Flower seeds will be passed out to all at the conclusion of the service.
The church has been celebrating Earth Sunday since 2015 when a small group of environmentally conscious church members formed the Recycling Interest Group later to be known as the Environmental Team. They have been able to educate the congregation on the importance of recycling and have helped to guide the church in making changes that are more Earth Friendly. Recycle bins have been placed throughout the church and a neighborhood recycle bin is available in the church parking lot. China dishes and mugs, silverware, glass communion cups, and drinking glasses are used routinely rather than single use plastic or paper ones. The use of plastic water bottles and Styrofoam are discouraged.
The church recently completed a multi-year project of collecting plastic bottle caps. Originally, the caps were collected to help provide Reilly School with a Buddy Bench for their playground. At the conclusion of that project, the church, and the Environmental Team members, after seeing how many bottle caps they were able to keep from going into landfills, chose to continue collecting bottle caps to have a bench made for the church. Scout Troop 3 from the church teamed up with the Environmental team and helped with the project. So many caps were collected that we shared some with a group in Richmond, Ohio, to make a bench, and the church was able to have another bench made for the church yard in memory of Denise Weingart, the creator of The Big Back Yard. In the end, thanks to the interest and willingness of the congregation, over the last five years, the congregation has kept thousands of pounds of bottle caps out of the landfill and repurposed them into four very meaningful benches.