20141204莊嚴道場‧珍惜資源To Educate the Public on the New Recycling Concept
I saw Tzu Chi’s Jing Si Hall in Keelung northern Taiwan which really impressed me. I was very touched. Everything in the landscape was created by volunteers with seedlings from the Jing Si Abode.
They nursed these seedlings at the Abode and brought them back to plant in their campus.After caring for them attentively, now these seedlings have grown. Every grass and tree was relocated and replanted. We can see greeneries at the Jing Si Hall now.
When I entered the Jing Si Hall, I saw all the commissioners and other volunteers in full gear, including wearing rain boots. That told me that construction is still going on. Volunteers came in to clean up the place. They really take care of the facility.
This place really shows a spirit of cultivation, not just a beautiful-looking building. Actually I am most happy to see their high spirits. Tzu Cheng members and commissioners work together in unity and harmony to build a home for Tzu Chi, which is also their home as well.
Working as one Dharma family, this Jing Si Hall has become a solemn place of cultivation. I can sense this spirit because volunteers treat each other as family members from the same Dharma lineage. With that heart, they build their Tzu Chi home.
That is their spirit when they are building their new spiritual home. This makes me very happy. Tzu Cheng volunteers tell me that the female volunteers there work as hard as the male volunteers, and Tzu Cheng volunteers work as a team with the female volunteers to take care of all the work, such as preparing and serving meals when the female volunteers are taking up the construction work.
Volunteers are hard at work without having preference for the kind of work. They are truly grateful for the teamwork. Then, they continued to share their appreciation for their previous facility.
That facility had served many people and survived any typhoons, which flooded Keelung many times, including flooding of Xizhi District, Keelung City, and QiduDistrict.
That facility was the central kitchen to provide hot meals in disaster time. Many projects were accomplished there, especially spiritual retreats. To have so many volunteers in Keelung today together in unity and harmony, that facility had served its purpose of nurturing new volunteers.I am very grateful toward the previous facility.
This new Jing Si Hall is nearing completion. This new spiritual place shall be prosperous, especially it’s located in the district called Anle, meaning Peace and Joy in Chinese.
The district is well developed, Tzu Chi volunteers plan to inspire every household to volunteer. I told them that if they could do that we will have a great Tzu Chi community in Keelung. That will really help Keelung to prosper very much. What I saw truly touches me very much.
Such is Tzu Chi volunteers’ sincere love toward the community. Fostering sincerity amongst people and bringing auspiciousness and blessings to the world will be the direction for Tzu Chi volunteers for the coming year.We hope to bringing auspiciousness and blessing to the world so that auspiciousness can spread so peace can be everywhere in the world.
We also need to educate the public to have integrity and to create blessings. We are creating blessings and are all doing recycling.In doing recycling, we need to do it properly.
After my visit to Keelung, I made a surprise visit to our Tzu Chi office in Xizhi. It was truly a surprise check, because we did not notify the volunteers there beforehand.
I have been there several times in the past. Every time I was there, there were a lot of people so I could not see the interior design of the building, such as the floors and its roof.
This time, I saw the inside very clearly. As I walked around inside, I said, “Before, I could not see the floors and roof, only a roomful of people. Today, I finally get to see clearly the whole interior.”
I walked around the building. The place was still very solemn and dignified even when it was closed and was kept very clean inside. The interior decoration gave an exquisite and antique feeling, which made me stop to enjoy and feel the place, touching the surface of things here and there.
Then, I truly know the place. Even though there was no one there when I visited, I know that the Tzu Chi office must be open for a lot of activities on normal days, with the place full of people. It was not closed and empty like on that day.
Afterwards, I walked to the recycling station. I saw the recycling station in Xizhi. It was incredible. The volunteer gave a very good tour of the recycling station. One hundred PET bottles were compressed into a rectangular cube and bundled up, making it a compact size.
It looked very neat and tidy lives up to their good reputation.They also sort plastics and papers.They sort the plastics in detail and store them very neatly in bags. That was my surprise check on them.
Before, when I praised Tzu Chi’s recycling stations, I never mentioned the one at Xizhi. This time, I saw how they do recycling in Xizhi. I was truly touched. It was very, very clean. I truly saw how they do recycling.
However, I saw used face masks. I asked the volunteers how come they collect used face masks. The volunteer replied that it was collect from a factory. I told them that we should not collect used face masks because used face masks have a higher risk of spreading infection.
If we collect them we might bring the germs back to the recycling station.We also should not collect containers or plastic bags that are used to hold food, which are oily or dirty. We should collect recyclables that are clean and already sorted.
After taking them back to our recycling station, we can further sort them in detail.Then, all the recyclables would be clean. This is a new recycling concept that we need to educate the public on.
We should know that there are many people making great effort to care for our Planet Earth. People should not give their unclean recyclables to Tzu Chi volunteers. This isn’t the right thing to do. We need to point this out to them.
We have to educate the public painstakingly and let people come to a deeper understanding of resource recycling. We need to let them know about this principle.
Therefore, we must promote and inspire people to start with recycling properly at home. Apart from protecting the health of the recycling volunteers and natural resources, it is important to also cherish water resources.
When we reuse the recyclables to turn into goods with better quality, we must clean up the recyclables beforehand.If we collect clean recyclables to begin with, we can save water from cleaning them. It is a saving of water.
So, while doing recycling, we must also think about cherishing water. In the world, Taiwan is considered one of the countries that faces water shortage. It also ranked 2nd in wasting water resources in the world.
So, we should cherish and treasure our water resources. It terms of doing recycling, we should try to persuade people not to create more pollution and to submit clean recyclables.
We should no longer postpone carrying out this educational effort. We must act now, reaching out to every person and household in our communities to promote the proper way to recycle.
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