meREWARDS allows you to get coupons and earn cash when you answer surveys, dinner and buy with our partners
BANGKOK: Since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, delivering food to your home is a new norm for many others in Thailand.
But while food delivery offers more features and convenience to consumers, they have also added tons of plastic to Thailand’s troubled waste control system.
Before the fitness crisis erupted, the Southeast Asian country generated about 5,500 tons of plastic tea a day, according to the president of the Environment Institute of Thailand (TEI), Dr. Wijarn Simachaya. Today, the number has risen to 6,300 tons, he said.
“The effect on food delivery facilities is considerable, especially in Bangkok, where the industry has grown enormously,” he told ANC.
The use of plastic has skyrocketed, even as the total waste generated in the Thai capital has decreased.
Bangkok produces about 10,500 tons of waste overall on a constant basis, however, that number has fallen by 12% since March, largely because the global pandemic has prevented tourists from traveling.
“However, the amount of plastic waste in Bangkok is higher in this period. Expansion is significant,” Dr. Wijarn said, adding that the city now generates about 3,000 tons of plastic waste each day.
The longevity of plastic products, the original of which can last 400 years, leads to most of them being deposited in landfills.
According to the Department of Pollution Control, plastic accounts for up to 12% of Thailand’s total waste year, about 2 million tonnes.
However, only 25% is recycled, while the rest is basically made of single-use plastic and ends up in landfills or streams.
In recent years, anti-plastic campaigns have increased public awareness of environmental problems in Thailand.
On 1 January, the country filed a national motion to voluntarily ban single-use plastic bags. The ban was won by the Thailand Retail Association, which has about 24,500 retail distribution channels nationwide.
But with the current fitness crisis, Dr. Wijarn said restricting public movement and expanding reliance on food delivery services, as well as online grocery shopping platforms, have blocked national efforts for plastic waste.
“A delivery voucher creates an average of 4 plastic items. Some types of foods, such as noodle soup, are accompanied by various seasonings in plastic bags. Many types of plastic can be recycled, but the current challenge is that plastic does not enter the waste system,” he said.
The crisis has posed some obstacles, but that is understandable. The consultation is where the used plastic goes and how it can be collected systematically.
Thailand faces a serious environmental challenge through millions of tons of plastic. In fact, it is the fifth largest contributor to ocean waste in the world.
A 2015 report through the Washington DC-based environmental organization Ocean Conservancy showed that more than some of the plastic waste in the ocean comes from five fast-growing economies: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand.
The scale of plastic waste could possibly have made many Thais more environmentally conscious. Always a lifestyle of 0 waste or poor plastic remains limited to a small network of other people in large part because life can be reasonable and simple with plastic.
While a quarter of plastic waste, basically plastic bottles, is recycled each year, single-use plastic parts, such as cutlery and affordable takeaway facility cups, end up in landfills, as they are considered nugatory and therefore not collected through giants. recycling companies.
“WINNING” – A PLASTIC JOURNEY
In his efforts to solve the plastic waste challenge in Thailand, Kamol Borrisuttanakul introduced a task in 2018 to increase the lifespan of single-use plastic bags and films. His name is Won, who “circle” in Thai.
“We got a comfortable plastic collection that is not advertised in the recycling industry and therefore becomes a waste, such as single-use grocery bags, plastic films and food bags. As long as they’re blank and dry, we take them,” he said. Kamol, CFO of TPBI Public Co Ltd.
Your company manufactures packaging such as plastic and paper bags, and recycles single-use plastic in production.
“That’s our role. Won trained to collect this type of plastic, which had nowhere to go in the afterlife and that generated a lot of plastic tea,” he added.
Our goal is also to inspire Thais to replace the way they dispose of waste and separate it before throwing anything in order to the amount of waste.
Each kilogram of used plastic bags and blank films collected through Won is five baht ($0.15) and will be donated to environmental foundations. To date, the allocation has recycled more than 18,000 kg of plastic.
Since its inception, the task has gained an increasing number of participants. Lately it has about 160 collection problems in Thailand, stretching from Chiang Mai in the north to the southern border province of Pattani. They are located in buildings, schools, universities and government agencies, adding around 50 administrative districts in Bangkok.
Some of the participants, according to Kamol, are staff and students. “It’s transparent that they need to participate to replace their society,” he said.
As the number of participants increases, the amount of single-use plastic collected through Won increased from a few dozen kilograms depending on the month to four tons depending on the month today.
Part returns to the production formula in the form of plastic resin, while others are distributed to Won’s business partners, who transform them into handicrafts and family pieces such as trash cans.
In Thailand, waste control remains a struggle and a culture of waste segregation is still in its infancy, according to Dr. Wijarn.
As the current fitness crisis is likely to continue, he expects many other people to continue to use food delivery and generate more plastic waste.
“Plastic is cheap. We think only of its use and elimination,” he said.
“Some countries have a deposit system, where consumers can borrow dishes, bowls and cutlery before returning them later. Sometimes a pick-up service is provided after the meal. We took a look at that.
Of the approximately 10,500 tons of waste generated in Bangkok per day, Dr. Wijarn said only 1,000 tonnes can be incinerated.
“That’s all our formula can accommodate. The rest goes somewhere else to be buried.”
Download our app or subscribe to our Telegram channel to receive updates on the coronavirus outbreak: https://cna.asia/telegram