Disseminating the encyclical on the "common house: the earth" and environmental protection Our partner CDJP Bukavu has been keen to pilole the dissemination of the latest Pope Francis encyclical. As mentioned in the same encyclical, there are forms of pollution that affect everyday people. Exposure to air pollutants produces a wide range of health effects, especially the poorest, causing million premature deaths. These people fall sick, for example, because of the high levels of inhalation of fumes from burning they use for cooking or for heating. To this is added the pollution that affects everyone, due to transportation, industry fumes, deposits of substances that contribute to the acidification of soil and water, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and toxic agrochemical generally. Technology, linked to the financial sectors, which claims to be the only solution to the problems, in fact, is usually unable to see the mystery of the multiple relationships between things, and therefore sometimes solves one problem by creating another .
Also to be considered pollution from waste, including hazardous waste present in various environments. Hundreds of millions of tons of waste are produced each year, many of which are not biodegradable: domestic and commercial waste, demolition waste, clinical waste, electronic and industrial, highly toxic and radioactive waste. The earth, our common home, seems to turn more and more into a huge garbage dump. In many places of the world, older people are nostalgic landscapes of the past, which now are being flooded with waste. Industrial waste as well as chemicals used in cities and in agriculture can cause bioaccumulation in organisms effect of neighbouring populations, which happens even when the attendance rate of a toxic element in one place is low. Many times it takes action only when irreversible damage to people's health have already occurred.
These problems are closely linked to the culture of waste, which affects both people excluded that things quickly turned into garbage. Carry, for example, that the bulk of the paper that is produced is wasted and is not recycled. It costs us to acknowledge that the functioning of natural ecosystems is exemplary: plants synthesize substances that feed the herbivores; these in turn feed carnivores, which provide large quantities of organic waste, which give rise to a new generation of plants. For cons, the industrial system has not developed in the final cycle of production and consumption, the ability to absorb and reuse waste and garbage. It is not yet come to adopt a circular production model that ensures resources for all and for future generations, which implies to minimize the use of nonrenewable resources, to moderate consumption, maximize the efficiency of their operations, reuse and recycle. Addressing this issue would be a way to counteract the waste of culture that ends up affecting the entire planet, but we note that progress in this direction are still insufficient.
In the DRC context, particularly that of the Eastern part of the country where we have a huge presence in carrying out governance work in areas of mineral extractives it is more than important that we interlink this essential message and begin to disseminate it throughout the parishes and local church structures to further reach out to the community and sensitize the people to protect the environment.