All the materials sent to the landfill in Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington Counties. Yet, a full one-third of that disposed material is paper, wood, metal, glass, plastic, food and yard waste. All of that could be recovered under existing programs. What are you throwing away?

Bottled water costs up to $8 a gallon (way more than gasoline!) Bring water from home in a reusable bottle. Help reduce the 125 million water bottles Oregonians throw away annually.

Safely discard unwanted pills, capsules, and liquid medication. Never put them down the drain or flush them down the toilet. We don't want them in our sewage treatment plants, or our streams and rivers.

• For pills and capsules, add a small amount of water to them so they'll become unusable. Dispose of them through your garbage
• For liquids, add an absorbent such as flour or kitty litter, Recap the bottle, and put it in the garbage.

Earth Day Network
Earth Day Network provides resources and materials that help organizations around the world build cleaner, safer and healthier communities.

National Council of Churches of Christ – Earth Day Sunday Page
Each year, the National Council of Churches' Eco-Justice Working Group focuses on a particular environmental theme and highlights a number of ways individuals and congregations can celebrate and protect God's creation.

Interfaith Power and Light
The Interfaith Power and Light (IPL) program is working nationally to mobilize religious IPL is working to establish Interfaith Power and Light programs in every state.

Interfaith Climate Change Network
A resource for communities of faith interested in global climate change with climate change statements, resources and links.

National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE)
National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE) is an alliance of independent faith groups: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches U.S.A., the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, and the Evangelical Environmental Network that have come together using both common biblical beliefs and their own traditions to offer religious resources for the protection of the Earth.

The defining feature of religion in the Pacific Northwest is that most of the population is “unchurched.” Fewer people in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska affiliate with a religious institution than in any other region of the United States. More people here claim “none” when asked their religious identification … and, unlike any other region, the single largest segment of the Pacific Northwest’s population is composed of those who identify with a religious tradition but have no affiliation with a religious community. – Patricia O’Connell Killen

An anthropologist new to the Pacific Northwest would find more fish icons than crucifixes. – Timothy Egan

We are a group of eight parish clergy and two religion professors who carry out our pastoral and teaching vocations in the uniquely beautiful but challenging environment of the Pacific Northwest. Our group was originally convened in March of 2004 by Dr. Patricia Killen and Dr. Samuel Torvend of Pacific Lutheran University’s Center for the Study of Religion, Cultures, and Society. Over the past eighteen months, we have met six times to discuss the themes in Dr. Killen’s book, Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone, the first of nine volumes in the Religion by Region series. The book takes its title from the fact that, when asked their religious identification, more people answer “none” in the Pacific Northwest that in any other region of the country. Our initial conversations centered on the question: What makes for vital Christian communities, conscious of and engaged in the public life of our regional culture?

Our current proposal builds on these prior conversations. We want to bring together a group of parish clergy, academics, and several of the leading social, cultural, and artistic voices of our region for conversations about the place in which we live. Through our conversations and gatherings, we hope to do a number of things:

Patricia O’Connell Killen, “Patterns of the Past, Prospects for the Future: Religion in the None Zone” in Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone (Religion by Region Series), edited by Patricia O’Connell Killen and Mark Silk, AltaMira Press, 2004, p.9

Timothy Egan, The Winemaker’s Daughter, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, p.120