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Quite funny on Sunday, it was pointed out our ward has been given new trash cans by our local government, and the High Priest Group Leader was complaining that “recycling is being enforced on us”.
The odd thing is that I’ve asked people in the the ward about recycling this, that and the other for years, and just been getting blank expressions.
For example, I got a bit annoyed because in our kitchen, there were plastic cups, but someone kept on stealing the glasses I brought in. Every time someone took a drink, the plastic cup would end up in the trash. I appreciate if a glass breaks it’s nasty, but it’s greener than throwing things out all the time.
We also go through quite a lot of paper in the ward, but Lord knows where it all goes to.
As for Sacrament, I doubt we’d any plans to recycle the sea of small cups that end up getting thrown out nearly every Sunday.
I’ve tried to introduce some environmentalist ideas into discussions, and I’ve long felt that if I do another talk soon (which is unlikely), I’ll talk about nature, whether it’s the Garden of Eden, or JS in his grove of trees. I’m not a nature worshiper but I don’t like mountains of trash everywhere!
I feel your pain. Our ward Christmas dinner they served us bottled water. In individual bottles. I looked at the sea of bottles and said aloud, “are they serious?” When the event was over I went around and with the help of one other person emptied the half full bottles into a container and put the bottles in a separate garbage can. No one thought we should be recycling. First of all, we pay a deposit for every one of those bottles. Second, there are plenty of people in the ward who could use the extra cash from turning in the bottles, and the most important point? The idea to reduce, reuse, and recycle is exercising a righteous stewardship over the earth and all things on it that The Lord has blessed us with. THAT is the argument I use, because few people in my ward really want to think about being green. We have a dumpster, just as all commercial customers do, the rest of the residents recycle by separating into green waste, recycling, and trash. It’s good for all of us. 
The real irony of this discussion is that new church buildings generally, if not exclusively, are built to high green standards. One more case of the water not flowing to the end of the rows.
Eternity4me wrote:I feel your pain. Our ward Christmas dinner they served us bottled water. In individual bottles. I looked at the sea of bottles and said aloud, “are they serious?” When the event was over I went around and with the help of one other person emptied the half full bottles into a container and put the bottles in a separate garbage can. No one thought we should be recycling. First of all, we pay a deposit for every one of those bottles. Second, there are plenty of people in the ward who could use the extra cash from turning in the bottles, and the most important point? The idea to reduce, reuse, and recycle is exercising a righteous stewardship over the earth and all things on it that The Lord has blessed us with. THAT is the argument I use, because few people in my ward really want to think about being green. We have a dumpster, just as all commercial customers do, the rest of the residents recycle by separating into green waste, recycling, and trash. It’s good for all of us.
Whether you believe in Eden or not, the word garden is important. Most people don’t trash their garden, they try and improve it or keep it beautiful. We’re getting more and more wasteful.
I take your point about the bottles. I’m guessing the local water is drinkable -could they not use jugs?
SamBee asked:
Quote:I’m guessing the local water is drinkable -could they not use jugs?
That is the sad thing SB, apparently last year they saw some people pour the leftover water from people’s cups into the pitchers on the tables, then take them to the kitchen, dump them out, and put them back into the cabinets without washing them. Ick. They didn’t want to have to wash the pitchers before use to make sure they were clean.
:crazy: Our water is drinkable, but not terrific. We often use gallon or larger jugs to fill the pitchers, but if you use enough ice then it tastes better. There are ways to really keep the waste down, but they didn’t want to spend 10 minutes washing the pitchers. Great example right?Quote:Our water is drinkable, but not terrific.
I think most of the water in major settlements in the USA, must be drinkable, unless fracking’s taken place nearby.
[img]http://www.cleanwateraction.org/files/images/nj/gasland_5full.png [/img] Quote:There are ways to really keep the waste down, but they didn’t want to spend 10 minutes washing the pitchers. Great example right?
And if they were just filled with water, as opposed to soda etc, then they’d hardly be that dirty anyway!
This thread reminds me of Tom Haws. He would sometimes talk about things the church could do to make the world a better place – like oppose war and violence, feed the poor, take an active part in protecting mother earth.
I think you Sam might remember him.
Yes, I agree that recycling is not something the church usually emphasizes.
i think that the church when it started off was continually paranoid about being seen as weird, and still is. (The joke is that as religions go, the LDS are quite run of the mill compared with some more New Agey flavors) This means that we don suits all the time, and the church spouts what it considers “safe” political and social opinions.
This means that the church is behind the curve on matters such as ethnic equality, gender, homosexuality etc, and only tends to come round to certain ideas years after they have become mainstream in society. (In the case of environmentalism, gender etc, I suspect the church is only just coming out of the 1960s.)
I’d only be half joking if I said that the church would oppose deforestation after the Amazon Jungle was completely cut down.
p.s. Tom’s right, all the stuff about war, violence and the poor is down there in the Gospels, from the mouth of Jesus himself.
SamBee wrote:I’d only be half joking if I said that the church would oppose deforestation after the Amazon Jungle was completely cut down.
Only if was located in Utah
Two words: Mormon Eschatology. Where I grew up, there was kind of the attitude that we can trash the planet because Jesus will just wave his magic wand and the Earth will be turned into paradise at the Second Coming.
I no longer live in the Salt Lake Valley, thank goodness. Every year the air is worse. And there is just so much resistance on doing something about it. I no longer have to breathe that stuff.
One thing I learned in Boulder was recycling. I was happy it rubbed off on me.
turinturambar wrote:Two words: Mormon Eschatology.
Where I grew up, there was kind of the attitude that we can trash the planet because Jesus will just wave his magic wand and the Earth will be turned into paradise at the Second Coming.
I no longer live in the Salt Lake Valley, thank goodness. Every year the air is worse. And there is just so much resistance on doing something about it. I no longer have to breathe that stuff.
One thing I learned in Boulder was recycling. I was happy it rubbed off on me.
There are doctrinal Mormon ways to teach this stuff. It’s not like we’re all Gaia worshipers in disguise!
Does anyone think the Sacred Grove would have much resonance, if it was “paved and turned into a parking lot”? (Sorry Joni)
Or Nauvoo would have been beautiful if it weren’t for the already present elements of the landscape, such as the river, bluffs etc?
The stuff in the temple video shows the beauty of the rest of non-human creation, wilderness, and animals. Having lived in the country, I don’t have any delusions about wild animals (some of them would rip your face off if you got them cornered!), but that doesn’t stop it being beautiful.
Quote:I no longer live in the Salt Lake Valley, thank goodness. Every year the air is worse. And there is just so much resistance on doing something about it. I no longer have to breathe that stuff.
I’ve heard a lot about this. I gather it’s because of the air layers there, that there isn’t enough wind there, or precipitation (rain, snow etc), and that the air just sits on top of the city like a duvet. (I haven’t been there, but I have seen similar effects in LA, where the air at the lower levels of the atmosphere is nothing short of disgusting.)
I’m totally floored by this attitude. I live in Scottsdale where people are wealthy and entitled and everyone here recycles. I don’t understand people who don’t. My parents are very politically conservative (let’s face it; they’re old), and they not only recycle, but have even been known to compost. To me, that’s real conservativism. hawkgrrrl wrote:I’m totally floored by this attitude. I live in Scottsdale where people are wealthy and entitled and everyone here recycles. I don’t understand people who don’t. My parents are very politically conservative (let’s face it; they’re old), and they not only recycle, but have even been known to compost. To me, that’s real conservativism.
Same here in the midwest, at least in my area. We’ve even had RS meetings on protectig the enviroment. That’s happened in other cities and countries I’ve lived in too.
hawkgrrrl wrote:I’m totally floored by this attitude. I live in Scottsdale where people are wealthy and entitled and everyone here recycles. I don’t understand people who don’t. My parents are very politically conservative (let’s face it; they’re old), and they not only recycle, but have even been known to compost. To me, that’s real conservativism.
The only thing I would say is that in some areas that they have made recycling far too complex. In some areas for example, they insist people sort their cans or tins out according to metal. That can be done far more easily in a scrap yard with electro-magnets.
Funnily enough, what you were saying about your parents there rings true. You only need to go back before the 1960s, and a surprising amount of stuff was recycled round here. People repaired all their clothes, or patched them, furniture could be given to other people who wanted it. My parents used to compost too. We lived out in the country, had chickens and a vegetable garden. Things like peelings worked very well in those contexts. My father, when he wanted money as a boy used to collect glass bottles, and used the refundable deposits to buy things.
The main problem these days of course is packaging, which is bulky and wasteful, and mainly for presentation.
When we were living in Singapore, recycling was difficult. Trash went down a chute in our maid’s quarters, straight down 30 floors. In order to recycle, we had to hold things aside and then take them down in the elevator and walk them across to where the recycling area was. But we did it.
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