A member of the bishops' environmental committee outlines some of the concerns faced by the church and society.Whenever she thinks about environmental issues she remembers the words of Cardinal Kim Soo-hwan: "Do you know where the longest journey in the world is? It is from the head to the heart. The second is from the heart to the feet." First of all: What we know to be true with the head has to be realized and felt with the heart and descend to the feet and practice.
Here in Korea almost everyone knows we are dealing with global warming, and climate change. But why don't we act? Why is it so difficult to move from the head to the feet?
Recently, China has been suffering from a waste disaster and began restricting garbage imports. Korea among the world nations started the separation of trash early on and is trying to reduce the generating of garbage by enforcing a waste disposal system. If the garbage is recycled, it will not be a problem, why did it begin to export garbage?
The first problem is that we make too much garbage. The annual amount of garbage generated in Korea is about 16,000 tons per day for municipal waste— 1.01kg per person per day— approximately 369 kg per year. Among the OECD countries, the output and consumption of plastic is the highest.
The second problem is the misconceptions and expectations about recycling. Korea's recycling rate was 86.1% in 2013, 93.6% in 2014 and 88.5% in 2015 according to National Statistics. These statistics are calculated as the amount of recycled material brought into the recycling facility and not the amount recycled. This is an error in calculating the separation rate as a recycling rate. Even with waste plastics alone, the actual recycling rate is only 14%. Trash has to be reduced.
The biggest cause of the problem is excessive garbage, so this has to enter the heart. The beautiful earth is not going to be destroyed right away, so my practice for the environment may feel that it is not so urgent. However, the plastics that we throw away become micro-plastics and penetrate almost everywhere, including fish, shellfish, bottled water etc.
In addition to the whale's belly, plastics, including vinyl, were in the seafood caught in our country. For our family's health now, environmental issues also require great effort. Of course, there are many things that need to be solved such as distribution and related laws as well as excessive packaging at the production stage, but if consumer's perception changes, the manufactures and distributer's will change.
Let's think about what I can do first. We Catholics remember the words: mea culpa "my fault my most grevious fault movement" that was wide spread among the believers for some time. This needs to be remembered and brought back into our lives.
Koreans remember the oil spill on the Taean Sea and was thought it would be difficult to solve within 10 years. The people wiped the oil up within a year with the use of hands and towels.
Carrying along with us a shopping bag, taking a tumbler and not using disposables. Let's practice eco-life (minimal life). Is it not the time for us to go on that long journey from the head to the heart and to the feet so that our descendants can live well in the earth God has given us?
