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.
