TEAM Campaigns for Another Waste-Free Spring Teaching

Dharamsala, 1 March 2008: Tesi Environmental Awareness Movement (TEAM) today concludes its 10 day awareness campaign on waste management at the Thekchen Choling Tsulakhang. Every year during His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s spring teaching, Tibetans and other pilgrims from around the world gather in McLoed Ganj for the holy sermons. Unfortunately, the mess left behind after the teaching leaves a heavy toll on the local environment. In order to avoid such problems, for the last three years TEAM has been organizing awareness campaigns on waste management during the teachings.

This year TEAM distributed 65 metal trashcans and 200 trash sacks around the temple for the proper disposal of trash. During the teaching TEAM also made constant appeal to the public through microphone not to pee, shit, spit and throw trash around the temple. TEAM’s brochures on waste management such as Say ‘No’ to Plastics, Save Energy, Save Water, Do not Burn your Trash, Say No to Styrofoams, Don’t Churn Your Tibetan Tea in PVC Pipes etc were distributed every day during the teaching free of charge.

Nyima, TEAM's main coordinator at the Temple, said, "There are not many Tibetans interested in our materials, sometimes I have to force it on them. However, there are few Tibetans who really appreciated our work and not only took our publications with them but also made sensible donations and requested us to keep up the good work. So I think Tibetans are in the initial stage and has a long way to go to be totally environmentally conscious people in terms of the modern environmental conservation. TEAM, as the lone Tibetan environmental organization in exile, has to strive really very hard in order to make our people fully aware of modern environmental issues and their responsibilities".

TEAM’s Assistant Director, Ugyen said, "the reason we are putting so many trash cans this year is to build a habit among our people not to treat every corner of the earth as a dumpsite. However, we also want people to know that if we do not buy unnecessary stuff in heavy plastic packages we wouldn’t have any trash to throw. And if we segregate our waste properly into biodegradable and non-biodegradable and if we compost, reuse and recycle our wastes regularly then we would not have any trash problem".

TEAM is a non-profit environmental organization with a mission to revive the ecological consciousness of the Tibetan people.