From the Editors October 3, 2011 Issue

Piles of trash, mountains of solutions

The Editors

By one reckoning, the tsunami disaster in Japan generated a century’s worth of trash in 45 minutes. Left behind were mountains of what were once cars, hills upon hills of cracked and crumbling concrete, wastelands of shattered glass, a wilderness of shredded lumber, mounds of mangled rebar, and still more mountains of mixed debris. Even before the catastrophe, Japan boasted what are among the most advanced recycling systems on the planet. Now, there is every incentive for the island nation to grow still more advanced in terms of its recycling infrastructure. If there ever was a moment to prayerfully take to heart the Bible promise, “Every mountain and hill shall be made low” (Isa. 40:4), this may be it. 

Could something as quiet and as unheralded as prayer really impact a concern of this magnitude? Absolutely. After all, no matter how big the devastation, it is nowhere near as big as infinite Spirit, nowhere near as huge as the one universal God who imparts the precise understanding needed to meet this challenge. Christ, the message of right understanding that comes from God to human consciousness, gets through every time.

Not that prayer has to substitute for already-in-place recycling programs. But that prayer—the mental turning of thought to the source of divine inspiration and understanding—can serve as a spiritual underpinning to the best approaches. Then even more innovative approaches come into view. What at first looked like mountainous problems evolve into big-time solutions. For instance, here’s just one outside-the-box proposal that might effectively dispose of the lumber. Chip the wood. Use the chips as mulch. Form a mulch field all around the disabled nuclear reactors. Plant trees and mushrooms in the field. (The right kinds of fungi are super-absorbent of radioactivity.) Continuously harvest the radioactive mushrooms. Incinerate them. Store the ash long-term in glass.

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