Promoting the environment

What a fantastic idea! The best way to promote environment is when you connect it with religion as people tend to follow it as something which makes God happy.

That’s the idea which this temple at Thailand has come up with. At the Wat Chak Daeng Temple, plastic bottles are recycled into fabric for the monks’ robes. Unlike most Buddhist temples where people give monks food and clothes, devotees here offer plastic bags and bottles in exchange for blessings.

For over two years, the monks have crushed 40,000 kgs of plastic, aiming to control the waste entering the Chao Phraya River. Over the course of the two years, the temple has produced at least 800 sets of robes, and has more in production. Each set sells for between 2,000 baht (Rs4,567) and 5,000 baht (Rs11,422), to keep funding the project and pay waste-sorting volunteers, many of whom are local housewives, retirees and differently abled people.

Prior to this, Wat Lan Kuad, another temple, locals were encouraged to deposit bottles and had eventually collected enough to use them as construction material for building the temple complex of around 20 buildings. 

Isn’t this a remarkable way to save the earth and encourage people to get conscious while thinking they are doing a service towards God?