West London Synagogue first to eco-gold - The Jewish Chronicle

West London Synagogue has become the first congregation to achieve a gold award for the EcoSynagogue environmental audit.

The country’s oldest Reform synagogue has become a flagship community for recycling waste, using Jewish teachings to promote environmental awareness and adopting other measures towards an ecologically healthy lifestyle.

Around 50 synagogues from across the community have now signed up to EcoSynagogue, which is run in partnership with the Board of Deputies.

To achieve gold in the audit - introduced earlier this year to help communities set environmental targets - requires 80 per cent attainment. It’s 60 per cent for silver and 40 per cent for bronze.

In the first group of audit awards, four communities achieved silver - Ruislip United, New North London, St Albans Masorti and Brighton and Hove Progressive.

A further nine gained bronze - Belsize Square, Woodford Forest United, Birmingham Central United, Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation, Glasgow’s Garnethill, Hadley Wood United, Hull Reform, Nottingham Liberal and Oxford Jewish Congregation.

Rabbi Helen Freeman, West London’s co-senior rabbi, said: “We so appreciate this honour and will continue to strive to ensure that environmental awareness is the focal point of our activities.

“Being a listed building presents its challenges. But the EcoSynagogue audit was a valuable tool in determining ways we can focus our efforts meaningfully.”

WLS member Angelina Doherty, who led the audit, said that environmentalism had long featured in Rabbi Freeman’s sermons and been embedded in the synagogue’s education programmes.

Andrea Passe, the Board’s EcoSynagogue project manager, said that “when the rabbi’s behind it, people follow. We heard the Chief Rabbi say last week that this is a sacred obligation.”

Newsletters to WLS members highlight environmental lessons that can be drawn from the weekly Torah portion or an approaching festival.

Looking ahead to Chanukah and the story of the long-burning oil, Ms Doherty said: “There is an energy efficiency message in there.”

Congregants will be directed to resources explaining how they can implement environmentally-friendly measures in their home.

While the synagogue’s grand 180-year old sanctuary may not be the easiest to heat, it installed A-plus rated energy efficient boilers a few years ago. With climate change experts encouraging less meat eating, it has opted for mostly vegetarian or vegan meals, including those it prepares for its social action projects, which use supermarket surplus that might otherwise go to waste.

It has a contract with a company to ensure that waste is recycled in the UK. Cans and plastics are sent to manufacturers to turn into new products; paper and cardboard go to a paper mill.

“Food waste is used to fertilise arable lands in Hertfordshire and glass is turned into eco-sand which is used underneath paving slabs,” Ms Doherty explained.

Another project is creating a biblical roof garden which can be used as an educational tool for both the synagogue and a school based at its premises. The pupils are designing butterfly houses to accommodate caterpillar-cocoons and butterfly-friendly plants are being planted to entice the insects to stay on.

For last week’s EcoShabbat, “on erev Shabbat, we had a display table outside with 120 packs of seeds for members to take home to plant,” Ms Doherty reported. “The bimah was greened up. It was buzzing.”

Ms Passe said everything WLS did had environmental fo “That cascades down to the community. There are communities not at this level but what they have been able to do is to take inspiration from what West London have done.”

But there is still more a gold-standard community can do as it strives to reach carbon-zero levels. EcoChurch, which has close links with EcoSynagogue, has rolled out a bespoke carbon footprint monitor for places of worship that can measure the carbon footprint of “absolutely everything”.

To achieve its silver, Ruislip reduced the energy for lighting to a quarter of previous levels and has stopped using disposable cups for kiddush. The flat roof of its building, a prefabricated structure erected straight after the war, was poor for heat retention so the community lowered the ceiling and put in insulation above it.

Birmingham Central has also improved installation, installed LED lights and, three years ago, renounced single-use plastics.