Waste and Worldviews

Abstract

The global trend tow ard urbanization has led to increasing waste challenges, especially in developing countries. Although Bhutan is still one of the w orld's least developed countries, its economy and capital city have grown rapidly during the past two decades, causing solid waste production to outstrip management capacity. The governm ent instituted new waste m anagem ent initiatives in 2007, but they gained little traction. Ethno graphic research in communities across the country revealed competing paradigm s about the identification of waste, the disposition of waste, and household practices of waste management. Vajrayana Buddhism, the dom inant religion throughout much of the country, profoundly shapes local beliefs and practices. Local environmental imaginaries and cultural concerns about ritual pollution have conflicted w ith technocratic manage ment protocols, leading to confusion and incompletely implemented policies. Waste m anagem ent policies m aybe more effective if they engage with the values and practices inherent in a lived religion that contributes to cultural understandings of waste.

The Reincarnation of Waste: A Case Study of Spiritual Ecology Activism for Household Solid Waste Management: The Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative of Rural Bhutan

“…Like the concepts of karma and rebirth central to Vajrayana Buddhism-in which the karma, or fortune, accumulated during a lifetime would influence one's rebirth in the next lifetime-each item took multiple trajectories, moving from one useful phase to another. Plastic and glass bottles stored the famous distilled arra homebrew, cooking oil, or milk; plastic bags were used for carrying lunch to the agricultural fields; rice sacks were universally valuable for corralling supplies to be transported from one village to the next (Allison 2014). Old clothing was used to make scarecrows to frighten wildlife away from crops, as well as pillows or children's clothes.…”

“…Ecological modernization does not recognize spiritual and religious perspectives on human life, and leaves untouched the harms that late modern capitalism imposes on nonhuman nature and poor and marginalized human communities. In Bhutan, technological improvements designed to corral and contain waste, including the introduction of garbage collection trucks and the installation of steel collection drums around town, while necessary, were not sufficient because they did not address the social and relational nature of waste (Allison 2014).…”

“…Building on Bhutan's rich tradition of thrift and creativity (Allison 2014;Choden and Roder 2008), as well as the dedication to artisanal production of household goods and handicrafts, 17 the Zero Waste project provides education and support to help local producers create goods by re-using discarded materials. This process, in which people look more closely at that which they have abjected or discarded, can be likened to Vajrayana rituals that deconstruct dualistic perspectives and challenge attachment by transforming aversive or disgusting substances into vehicles on the path toward enlightenment (Stevenson 2013, p. 73).…”

“…The Bhutanese villagers have confronted the by-products of their newly-consumerist society and have found methods to transform and transmute previously rejected materials into useful items. The tsokpa, or "dirtiness" Rinpoche refers to (also known as drib in Tibetan and Dzongkha (sgrib or grib)) is a form of ritual or spiritual pollution that can result from upsetting the social or moral order, and requires the intervention of a ritual specialist for rectification (Allison 2014). Like waste, it is not a permanent condition, but can persist without outside intervention and steps to rectify the moral or spiritual infraction.…”

The spiritual significance of glaciers in an age of climate change

“…Thus, concern about unleashing the wrath of mountain deities prevents the pollution of mountain peaks through social disorder or the creation of noxious smells. These traditional intuitions about avoiding the pollution and desecration of high places add another dimension to modern understandings of pollution, showing ways that polluting substances work on multiple levels, affecting moral and spiritual dimensions, along with the physical realm . While burning meat at high elevations would add an insignificant amount of carbon to the global greenhouse gas budget, the Tibetan Buddhist prohibitions against polluting the atmosphere parallel concerns about greenhouse gasses—and indeed black carbon, from incomplete burning, is one of the most dangerous atmospheric contaminants for glaciers …”