The prohibition on defiling the elements is systematic rather than sentimental. Water, earth, fire, and by extension air are creations entrusted to the Amesha Spentas, so polluting them is an offence against a divine being. The consequences run through daily practice: rules about where to wash and where waste water may go, prohibitions on carrying a corpse near running water, requirements about the disposal of hair and nail clippings, and the prohibition on putting anything dead into fire. Contemporary Zoroastrian bodies have leaned on this heavily in environmental advocacy, and the claim that theirs is the first ecological religion is regularly made; it is not baseless, though the ancient concern is ritual purity rather than sustainability, and reading modern conservation into it requires some care. The sharp practical irony is that the same principle is what makes disposing of the community's own dead so difficult now, since the one method that satisfied it has stopped working.