Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules. God our Father did not give the task of caring for the earth to money, but to us, to men and women: we have this task! Instead, men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the “culture of waste.” Pope Francis June 5 2013
In an effort to reduce used candle waste, DM Hay has launched a national wax recycling scheme. For our Southwest customers we collect and sort used candles via our new Local Delivery service. The response has been very positive, however, many parts of the country are without their own schemes. We are therefore reaching out to the Church Community to roll out a national scheme. We cannot collect from every church, however we can arrange collections at designated centres or 'Diocesan Hubs', perhaps a Cathedral or administrative centre. We'd supply suitable collection containers and collect at regular agreed intervals. The candles would need to be sorted by type (altar, coloured, sanctuary, sanctuary, votive, etc) but other than that the scheme would be relatively straight forward to run and manage.
A major candle manufacturer is working with us to provide the necessary expertise to recycle the wax to a defined high standard suitable for candle manufacturing. If the wax can be recycled economically then the benefits may extend to lower raw material costs and this may help mitigate the pressure on product prices.
Based on the responses we've had to date we believe there is a genuine appetite for such a scheme, however, we are unclear if this extends nationally. Therefore, a response to this blog by way of support would help considerably in gauging its appeal. We are inviting Diocesan representatives to get involved and work with us to get the scheme running nationally. Please get in contact and help us reduce waste of unused church candles.
Thank you for your support.