Guideline for Environmental Impact Reduction From Donations of Religious Offerings in the Thailand 4.0 Era

Introduction

Thailand 4.0 era is a trend that attracts a lot of interests and analyses in many perspectives thanks to the government’s policy vision to drive Thailand towards the goal of “security, prosperity, and sustainability” especially the shift from the former economy to innovation-driven economy. The evolution of the Thai society as devised by the guideline of the national economic and social development plan since 1961 revealed that although sometime in the past the national economic and social development plan was successful in development, one important problem of Thailand’ social development was the development of human resource to have potential in national development. Since the 8th National Economic and Social Development Plan, the focus was on the development of “people at the center of development”. Economy was also used as a tool to develop people to achieve happiness and good quality of life, as well as integrated development to create balance between economic, social, and environmental developments. As for Buddhism as one main institution of the Thai society with the role in the development of the Thai society, it was found that in the past Buddhism succeeded in creating happiness and good ways of life for the Thai society so that the Thais had the characteristics of generosity and merit making. This was the identity of the Thai culture that integrated the Buddhist concepts with the merit-making culture as appeared in various traditions such as Buddhist ordinations, weddings, or Songkran Festival, etc.

Buddhism is one of the religions that has long been with the Thai society. Most Thais or 93.5% are Buddhists (National Statistical Office, 2018). They practice Buddhism as the guideline of living so that it has become the cultural foundation reflecting the progress of thoughts and expressing the ways of life of the Thai society that has been passed on according to the cause-effect belief. This results in the drive of life based on Buddhist principles in various forms, merit making, benefaction based on the three forms of merit making in Buddhism namely almsgiving meaning merit gained from almsgiving, precepts meaning merit gained by respecting the five precepts, and prayers meaning merit gained by prayers. Although the offerings are good deeds that will make Buddhists happy both physically and mentally, present environment is very different from the past especially the environmental dimension which involves the ways of life of the Thais. The various activities of merit making can inevitably cause various types of waste both from religious offerings, and decorations for beauty. Each activity of religious offerings results in a large amount of waste, including plastic bags, plastic cups, foam boxes, and food scraps. It is for the temples to dispose of them. The efficient waste management depends on the resource management system of religious offerings of a particular temple. It is a possible concept that the resource and environmental management can integrate with the waste management from religious offerings by focusing on the reduction of waste from the sources of origin of religious offerings such as communities, shops around temples, and waste from religious offerings around temples.

Temples and communities have long existed side by side. Temples are the spiritual centers of residents and surrounding communities. Temples are not the property of any one in particular. Rather they are abstract feelings that community residents have common feelings as part of the temples. Further away from progress, temples are even more important to community residents. In the people’s current ways of life in Thailand 4.0 era, progress and technology assume more roles in their lives. Most people use materials as moral dependence which is easy and quick to find. So, the important role of communities towards temples reduces. As some temples and many communities do not earn enough to do a lot of merit making, time and energy are the most useful. Temples are gradually developed as residents participate in providing for information of the overview of the chart of the project systematically designed of waste management and understand the guideline or the model of waste management from religious offerings that communities clearly want to have in the future. One important thing that is obtained from participation in the design of the development of temples by communities is to enhance spiritual value to the residents with more feelings of co-owners.