Quakers grow a low-carbon sustainable community

	Members of Friends at Sheffield Central Meeting which is planning an edible roof garden. Photograph: Steve Loader

One Quaker Meeting is developing a rooftop herb garden. Another runs a food co-operative, providing healthy food as well as cooking workshops to the community.

A third is redesigning its existing garden using permaculture methods to introduce fruit and nut trees and edible plants. Several Quaker Meetings have invested in eco-friendly insulation, switched to renewably resourced electricity providers or reduced their water consumption.

Still more have set up sustainability groups or linked up with initiatives such as the Transition Town network, and are showing films, holding meetings and publishing articles to raise awareness around climate change.

These are just a few of the inspiring stories of Quaker faith in action that are being gathered from around the UK following the decision a year ago by the entire Quaker movement in Britain to commit itself to becoming a low-carbon, sustainable community.

	"We are called to teach our children right relationship, to live in harmony with each other and all living beings in the earth, waters and sky of our Creator" - the Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice, April 2012

The Religious Society of Friends, as Quakers are formally known, has lead the way in the faith response to the environmental crisis facing our world.

In Kenya in April this year, the World Conference of Friends dedicated Quakers around the world to the "repair of the world", saying:

"We are called to teach our children right relationship, to live in harmony with each other and all living beings in the earth, waters and sky of our Creator who asks: 'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?' (Job 38:4) .

The Kabarak Call for Peace and EcoJustice equated this 21st century campaign with being "as difficult and decisive as the 19th century drive to abolish slavery".

Read more about what Quakers are doing around sustainability - including the 90-page Sustainability Toolkit they have developed to help achieve the move to a low-carbon community - at www.quaker.org.uk/sustainability.