Green Dharma

Green Dharma
G Sakamoto

There are things we can do to help repair the earth. Simple things like turning off unnecessary lights. Recycling things we use and use less things. I saw Kobata Sensei bring his own ohashi to a meeting and put them away when we finished eating. Rather than use disposable ohashi, he was using reusables. Simple. Turn off the faucet when you brush your teeth. Keep your tires inflated properly and your vehicle maintained. There are so many simple things we can do to help.

Our temple can also help. In the office we try to recycle. Fortunately, our recycling is easy where everything goes in the same bin. Using less styrofoam and recycling paper can be a big help. In 2006 the United States generated 85.3 million tons of waste paper and recovered 44 million tons. We also generated 29.5 million tons of plastics and recovered 2 million tons of it. (http://www.epa.gov/msw/msw99.htm) It can take 500 years for plastic to degrade in a landfill and under similar conditions even paper can take a hundred years or longer to degrade. Landfills, until recently, were not designed to facilitate the decomposition of materials in them. Rather they have been designed to contain and restrict flow of contaminants into the environment. Once landfills are covered over there is little or no new available oxygen, decomposition slows and eventually stops. Landfills become vast storage sites rather than the compost sites we might imagine.

Recycling reduces our landfill needs and usually reduces the amount of energy needed to produce new products. The difficulty with recycling plastics (polystyrene) is that total amount in use is not completely recovered. Portions of the millions of tons produced every year are buried in landfills or lost into the environment. Plastics tossed or lost along the Pacific Rim end up in an area of the Pacific Ocean known as the north Pacific central gyre. It is an area of the Pacific as large as Africa and where plastics have been accumulating for decades. Since plastics are not biodegradable but photo degradable, as they break down, even to molecular size, the particles are not digestible. Animals swim through this soup. Birds have been found on remote islands their carcasses littered with bottle caps mistaken for food.

As we become more aware of the effects of our actions we can make choices to reduce the harm our actions cause. We can use more compost able utensils and cups and plates. We can be more diligent about recycling. Find ways to reduce our carbon footprint on the environment.

Our unenlightenment prevents us from seeing clearly. Our actions cause harm to ourselves and others. Where we see relationships, we can make adjustments. To ignore the consequences of our actions will only result in more difficulties for ourselves and others.