Loving Your Neighbor - The Dubuque Rescue Mission Like many of us, Rick Mihm, the Executive Director of the Dubuque Rescue Mission, believes that God is the creator of all and that we are called to be good stewards of God’s gift of the natural order. But he also feels a very strong connection to the poor, and sees the social justice angle of environmental stewardship as paramount. “When I assumed leadership in October of 2007, one of my primary goals was to create some level of sustainability,” Rick says. And to this end he has made many changes to improve the energy efficiency of the Mission house. It all started for Rick when as a high school student he was invited to help out at the local Catholic Worker House in Dubuque. He continued to help out while in college at Loras, and during his last Christmas break in college he took a road trip with a girlfriend to Juarez, Mexico where they volunteered to work with the people who scavenge from the dump. Rick says it was a modern day version of Dante’s Inferno. The people would pick rotting food from the dump to feed their families, while from the top of the dump they could see across the border to the golden arches of McDonald’s in El Paso, Texas. When Rick went to seminary he had the opportunity visit the Middle East to work with the poor and had his eyes opened to the harsh living conditions of so many in Cairo. After seminary, he ran the Catholic Worker house in Waterloo and 8 years ago he and his wife, Mary, started New Hope Catholic Worker Farm in Lamotte, Iowa. When asked if he is a Catholic, he says he is a ‘Catholic Worker.’ The Dubuque Rescue Mission offers a public meals program, temporary housing for transients, work opportunities, times of worship, and other programs that minister to the less fortunate. In addition, they provide clothing and furniture items to those in need. Rick sees a direct connection between our profligate use of resources here in the U.S. and the impact on the poor worldwide. “We import resources from other countries, and in return, ship them our waste,” said Rick. “It’s as though the U.S. were stockpiling all the resources and building a big wall around them to keep other poorer nations from sharing in our wealth.” Rick likens our situation to the Gospel story of the Rich Fool who has such an abundant harvest he doesn’t know what to do with it, so he builds a huge barn to hold it all and then sits back to enjoy his wealth. God says to him, “‘You fool, this very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’” So to be a good steward of the resources of the Mission and to prevent the pollution from coal fired power plants from being shipped overseas on the air currents, Rick is instituting energy efficient measures at the Mission house.  On his very first day on the job Rick had a tour of the 5 story building where the Mission has been located since 1950. There, he saw a huge chest freezer in the basement that must have dated from 1950, full of frost and past-dated food, plugged in and running. He emptied, unplugged, and recycled that freezer and has instituted a number of measures since then that are saving the Mission big time. He started with an energy audit in May of 2008. Alliant sent a private third party consultant to do the free audit that was very thorough, and they gave the Mission 200 compact fluorescent light bulbs to replace their old inefficient incandescents. The first recommendation they followed through with was to improve the old attic insulation, rated as R10 due to age and compaction, to R39 insulation. This was paid for out of the Mission budget with a small rebate from Alliant. They also weather-stripped the leaky back alley doors and tuck-pointed the sub-basement walls that were enormous air infiltrators.  Then due to a freak of nature, their rooftop air-conditioning and heating unit was struck by lightning, “by the grace of God,” Rick said. “Our insurance covered this and we now have an entirely new system that is much more energy efficient.” And their natural gas provider, Black Hills Energy, gave them a rebate for choosing energy efficient equipment. The Mission feeds dozens of people a day from their commercial kitchen, and uses several freezers to hold the donated food. So Rick applied for a grant from Alliant to replace four of the upright freezers with Energy Star freezers, two in the fall of 2008 and two in the fall of 2009. They also upgraded their leaking commercial fridges and freezers with new magnetic strips, and recycled another 35-year old chest freezer. Plus, they took advantage of the Alliant rebate to purchase an energy efficient pre-rinse sprayer that is saving them lots of money on hot water. The energy auditor suggested that they look at upgrading their ancient office equipment, so Rick decided to rent a new small energy efficient copier/printer/fax machine from Ricoh for a $55/mo fee that includes all ink and maintenance and 2000 copies a month. Juanita in the office is thrilled because it works better, it’s only half the size of the previous 3 machines that it replaced, but also the office used to get uncomfortably hot from the copier being on, even when it wasn’t making copies. The Mission board has been very supportive of Rick’s leadership in making these changes. They see it as being good stewards of the resources their donors have given, and the less money spent on energy costs, means more money spent on helping others. Rick is working on producing a pre-audit baseline carbon footprint of the Mission, and will be making a comparison footprint that reflects all the energy efficient changes in 2010, so check back here for news of how much money, energy and carbon emissions the Mission has saved. Contact Rick Mihm for more information at mihmr@mchsi.com.