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Phra Maha Pranom Dhammalangkaro, the abbot of a Buddhist monastery in Samut Prakan province, near Bangkok, stands by piles of waste brought for recycling to his temple. (Photo: Tibor Krausz)
By Tibor Krausz,Bangkok | Thailand
The Buddhist monastery of Wat Chak Daeng sprawls across scenic, leafy ground on a bank of the meandering Chao Phraya River.
Yet at first glance the temple in Samut Prakan province, near Bangkok, looks less like a place of worship than a recycling plant.
For starters, greeting visitors by the gate are growing mounds of discarded plastic bottles. Among the piles of plastic waste, local volunteers busy themselves sorting a variety of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles into neat piles. Nearby, a man is operating a machine that crushes colorless water bottles so that they can be packed into big blocks.
"I come here every day," says Parichart Seajeng, a heavyset middle-aged housewife who removes caps from drinks bottles and pours leftover liquids from them into a bucket. "My kids are grown and I have nothing much to do at home. I can be of use here."
Once sorted and prepared, the water bottles will be transported to a factory where, through an involved industrial process, they are turned into materials from which useful new objects can be created.
Those objects include monks' robes made with polyester fiber obtained from plastic bottles. Mixed with cotton and an antibacterial nanomaterial, the newly made fabric is cut and stitched into new robes for monks by a team of female volunteers back at the Buddhist temple.
Wat Chak Daeng's upcycling operation is the brainchild of the abbot, Phra Maha Pranom Dhammalangkaro, who has found a way to lend a spiritual dimension to recycling.
"If you can make T-shirts from plastic bottles, I figured you could make monks' robes as well," he explains.
Thai Buddhists believe that by donating robes to monks, they can make merit, which ensures better karmic prospects for them.
The senior monk reasoned that if he started making robes from plastic waste, many locals would be more inclined to collect discarded plastic objects like water bottles, of which 4.4 billion are produced each year in the country.
Volunteers turn fabric made from recycled plastic water bottles into new robes for monks at Wat Chak Daeng. (Photo: Tibor Krausz)
Thailand is one of the world's worst plastic polluters. Thais used 70 billion plastic bags last year. Not surprisingly, plastic waste has reached endemic proportions around the Southeast Asian nation, littering streets and polluting waterways.
Several retailers have stopped handing out disposable plastic shopping bags since Jan. 1, yet other forms of single-use plastic continue to be thrown away in vast quantities every day.
"We all need to waste less and recycle more. That is why we encourage people to collect recyclable plastic bottles and bring them to us," Phra Maha Pranom says.
"By collecting and donating plastic bottles, they can make merit just as if they had donated robes. This way they can help clean up the environment."
His scheme has been working. In recent months people have been bringing tons of plastic waste, especially plastic bottles, to his monastery.
One recent afternoon, several people arrived at the temple with large bags filled with empty water bottles. Among them was five-year-old Pongporn, a.k.a. Bobby, a chubby little chap wearing a Spider-Man costume. Accompanied by his mother, the boy brought several large plastic bottles.
"I told my friends I will go to the temple and donate bottles," Bobby, who lives in the neighborhood, explains with childlike sincerity. "I want to help the monks."
In partnerships with several local companies, Wat Chak Daeng recycles donated plastic waste or upcycles it into new products.
The abbot and his team have produced hundreds of new robes, most of which have been donated to his fellow monks at Wat Chak Daeng and elsewhere.
By wearing robes from recycled materials, these monks follow in the footsteps of their religion's founder. "During his lifetime, the Buddha wore robes that had been made from cast-offs and other discarded garments," the abbot says. "We are following his example."
The temple is doing more than just turn plastic bottles into new robes. Its volunteers, who are all laypeople from the local community, compost organic waste into fertilizers, turn food waste into biofuel and convert plastic waste into diesel fuel.
Iraj Rithsureegul, one of the volunteers, shows off a foam food container with sliced pieces of mango in it. She's just bought the snack for lunch at a local market. "We'll recycle this container into garden stools," she says.
In one pilot project, the temple has been mixing Styrofoam food containers with cement and making them into rock-shaped garden stools. In another project, colored plastic bottle caps are turned into toys, decorative baskets and household objects.
The monks regularly walk around the neighborhood, urging locals to waste less and collect plastic waste for recycling. They also spearhead clean-ups during which a stretch of the Chao Phraya River and parts of the surrounding area are cleared of waste.
"If more and more people do this, we can clean up Bangkok step by step," Phra Maha Pranom notes.
Some of his fellow monks at other monasteries are likewise seeking to wean Buddhists off their habit of endlessly wasting single-use plastic objects like shopping bags and food wrappings.
At several Buddhist temples, monks have asked for home-cooked food, which the faithful offer them daily by way of alms, to be brought in banana leaves and bamboo containers rather than plastic.
"People respect monks," Phra Maha Pranom says. "We can play a part in changing their attitudes about plastic waste."
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