Halo, eco-loving viewers, and welcome to Good People, Good Works on Supreme Master Television. Modernization and technological development have brought great convenience and comfort into our lives, but due to humanity's careless neglect of Mother Nature, levels of raw material and energy consumption have seriously destabilized Earth's environment.

Fortunately many green movements have sprouted worldwide to enhance the sustainability of our ecosystem. Today's show features green organizations that are helping to create an environmentally friendly society through innovative ways to collect and reuse discarded materials, products and organic waste in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Austria respectively.

Austrian Association of Municipalities

Our first stop is lower Austria, where we'll visit the Austrian Association of Municipalities

which is based in the city of Langenlois. Association member Mr. Wilbert will discuss the group's recycling program and how it began.

Wilbert (f): The Association of Municipalities is an association of ３０ towns in the district of Krems and is responsible for around ６０,０００ residents with particular emphasis on refuse collection and waste management and the relevant information for the residents of those districts.

Wilbert (f): In Lower Austria in １９９０, １９９１, and １９９２ we were faced with a huge problem, because we were running out of landfill sites. The refuse that we collected got dumped in huge landfill areas and the landfill capacity was reaching its limits. We then came to realize fairly quickly, that all this refuse contains a lot of recyclable materials and as a result we developed waste separation.

HOST: Sorting the large amount of discarded material collected from the district is important as it helps to greatly reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill. Wilbert (f): We are now part of a huge sector that falls under the umbrella of recycling and reusing. We collect in our district per year as a key figure around ２５,０００ tons of waste, and by now we've come so far that we have only ７,０００ tons; that's just less than a third of it that cannot be utilized further.

The rest gets nearly recycled or is recycled already. Our collection success rate of pure material is ９６％, ９８％: materials that we can hand over to the paper industry, materials that we can process in composting plants to compost, the organic waste collection bin, material that we can then forward to the plastic processing industry, like, for example, plastic bottles.

And the second level are so-called collection islands, which are in close vicinity to each household, say within a catchment area of １５０-２００ households, where we have built small stations for glass collection, clear and colored glass and metal packaging, cans, metal cans. Polystyrene waste materials are currently used in house building as insulation materials, so reprocessed polystyrene waste materials is used as insulation material.

The Green Foundation

HOST: Now let's travel to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, home of The Green Foundation, a full-service, electronic recycling company that raises funds for charities, on behalf of governments, charities, and institutions by recycling old, non-working and unneeded electronic items in the Middle East at no cost.

The Foundation's chief executive officer and chairman Mr. Dominic Gothard now discusses the group's work. Zlin, Czech

The Green Foundation was started in January of ２０１０, primarily with focus on recycling old and redundant electronic items in the Middle East. So we focus on five core items, mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras, MP３ players and gaming consoles.

Dominic (m): Whenever we get items, we grade them. So we divide them into working, non-working and beyond economic repair. Working items we trade straightaway back into African markets, where people can then buy quality, second-hand phones at an affordable price.

Non-working items we take to the factory, we repair them, we engineer them; we have qualified people that can do that, and then they're upgraded to working and obviously traded in the same way.

The beyond-economic- repair items we break them down and use their spare parts wherever possible. And wherever it's not possible we melt all the items down into plastics, metals or precious metals, so １００％ of everything we receive is re-used, we don't landfill anything.

HOST: An electronic item may contain such dangerous substances as cadmium, lead, barium, or mercury. These toxic materials can seriously damage the environment if there is improper disposal of the device. For example, breathing in cadmium can seriously injure the lungs and cause death.

Dominic (m): Obviously electronics carry corrosive and hazardous waste chemicals, so those in the ground over a course of years will explode, they'll soil the environment, contaminate the water and kill wildlife.

So, it's very important that we get that out of the ground and that we try and recycle and re-use those items as much as possible.

HOST: The Green Foundation is working to set a new standard for sustainability in the Middle East as recycling currently is not widely practiced in the region.

Dominic (m): In the Middle East the recycling industry here is very new, it has never really existed before. Only about five percent of anything is recycled in the Middle East, compared to around about ３０％ in other parts of world. Electronic recycling doesn't exist at all.

Dominic (m): Half the problem is not people actually wanting to do it, it's actually giving them the resources and opportunities to actually do that.

HOST: Mr. Gothard believes that the Middle East's recycling market has great potential for growth, especially in the category of mobile phones.

Dominic (m): We operate from Pakistan and India, right across the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) up into Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan, so we handle １２ countries from this office. The Middle East is a very interesting market because they have a very high usage of mobile phones. On average, each person has ２.２ phones. So in United Arab Emirates alone, for example, where the population is around about four million, there are nine-million phones.

Now, if you scale that up, it means that potentially there are ４００-million phones in this part of the world. They're not all being used; a lot of them are sitting in drawers.

HOST: The Green Foundation's contributions to charities through its recycling programs have been significant. Over US$４.５ million has gone to １５０ different charities since The Green Foundation's inception.

Johnathan(m): And for the charities as well we're generating funds for them but at the same time in the background we're also helping the environment. It's a real win-win situation for the charities.

Dominic (m): I hope that we have a wide range of awareness in the residential community, so that people can easily dispose of their electronic items. And last but not least, I hope that we've managed to raise a lot of money for the charities by recycling as many items as possible.

Zaila Association

HOST: The final organization featured today's is the Zaila Association, a Swiss-based non-governmental organization which works to protect the beautiful region of Southern Morocco. The Zaila Association currently has several projects in the village of M'hamid which is located on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Now let's hear about the Association's efforts from its coordinator, Mr. Ali Sbai.

Ali (m): The Zaila Association was created five years ago in order to curb this drift towards global pollution, so to speak. So we told ourselves that we had this plastic pollution everywhere, but nonetheless, the desert, the glaciers and the mountains had to be preserved. It's like the Earth's lungs for us. So the lungs must be clean; we must protect them or else it is the whole planet that is sick.

Ali (m): Because even, for example, in the mountains and in the seas, there is pollution everywhere, it is everywhere. You know, in all the oceans, there are many, many shipwrecks… Seas are garbage cans now.

Supreme Master TV (f): And full of plastic.

Ali (m): And plastic, and so now, we see this pollution in the desert. And that is why we, at Zaila initiated the Zaila alternative solution project: `Plastic: Ephemeral Usage, Durable Pollution.'

HOST: The Zaila Association provides guidance, know-how and alternative approaches to the use of plastic and other non-biodegradable, human-made products.

Ali (m): So we allow the people or encourage them to make use of nature for a good cause, meaning, making use of nature without damaging it. That is the equation that is proposed to humans now because the planet is in overproduction, in overconsumption, it is saturated. A plastic bag takes ２０ seconds to produce, ２０ minutes to use and ４００ years to biodegrade.

In this equation, we have everything. That is the symbol of durable pollution. So in counterpart, we have this small basket produced by Zaila as an alternative solution to plastic.

This basket or this small bag that is made out of palm fibers has a lot of purposes: to preserve food, to go to the market and to keep things fresh. This small palm bag can last four to five years. This bag is the equivalent of ２,０００ plastic bags. When we make it, we save the Earth from ２,０００ plastic bags.

HOST: Supreme Master Ching Hai also advocates the use of alternatives to plastic products to protect the environment, as in this May ２００８ videoconference in South Korea.

Supreme Master Ching Hai: in many places there are already bans on the use of plastic bags and many convenience stores, for example, in America, they are already trying to limit the use of harmful packages.

Supreme Master Ching Hai: We should use something less toxic, and we should use our own shopping bags wherever we go, to minimize whatever we can the effect, the harmful effect to the planet.

HOST: Our deep appreciation goes to the Austrian Association of Municipalities, The Green Foundation, the Zaila Association, and Supreme Master Ching Hai for promoting green lifestyles so that Mother Nature can continue to protect and nourish all the precious life in our world.

For more information on the organizations featured on today's program, please visit the following websites: Austrian Association of Municipalities www.Gemeindebund.at The Green Foundation www.TheGreenFoundation.me Zaila Association www.Zaila.ch