I think a more generous reading of the article is that he's saying religion satisfies a human need, and in the absence of formal religion, something else has arisen to fill that need. He's not saying washing trash is a religion, he's saying that, in this case, the thing which satisfies what religion once satisfied for people is climate anxiety, and that the behavior around that takes on some of the broad behavioral characteristics of religion.
That's a good point. Perhaps I was a bit too hard on it. I was reading it through the lens of the title, "We wash our trash to repent for killing God". But frequently titles are a bit more florid than the essay proper--to get people to read it.
Community for community's sake seems hard in late stage capitalism/developed economies. Something else beyond religion and war will be needed to bring people together, and the workplace alone is not it (based on the evidence).
Thanks for the links. Certainly, when I became an atheist, the hardest thing to come to grips with was the loss of community. There are lots of little communities--WOW guilds, school sports teams, etc. But there's nothing like a universal religion which everybody belongs to.
https://www.sundayassembly.org/ is the closest organized effort I've found, besides local community groups around volunteering, philanthropy, and hobbies/shared interests.
