Thailand has a garbage problem
- Ye-Soon und Horst
- Apr 27, 2023
- 4 min read
Despite our wonderful life in the little paradise, there are always facts that make a European with desired climate neutrality and Saturday sweeping habits shudder. After three years in Thailand, we had to get used to the streets lined with plastic bags and garbage. What we want or need to address today, however, goes far beyond flying bags on the fences.
Let's start small – with the normal household waste, which is produced in Thailand and is still not disposed of properly. The garbage collection only comes here if you pay your taxes regularly. So actually only to restaurants, hotels and foreign residents, who dutifully pay their maintenance fee monthly. Otherwise, there are blue plastic barrels outside on the streets from time to time, which overflow with waste and stink like a baby diaper burst 2 weeks ago. Here everyone throws his stuff unsorted, who just does not pay the garbage levy. Waste separation and recycling are virtually non-existent here. The garbage collectors only scrape bottles out of the garbage mountain to earn a few extra baht for the deposit. The garbage trucks stink like their contents and are completely open. Bravo.
I often drove past a ditch about 200 meters long and 10 meters wide on a fallow property, which was gradually filled with garbage. Recently I stopped confused and rubbed my eyes: the area was filled with topsoil, rolling turf laid and palm trees planted. Next to it, a small lake was dredged and flooded. Here, tourists are now allowed to fish for a fee without anyone worrying about the waste underneath or the toxic water in the lake. It shakes me ice cold now. Motto: If no one sees it anymore, it's no longer a problem. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case - in the neighboring street a wonderful village pond is being filled with rubble and now also garbage, in the middle of the residential area. Every night a few more bags end up there.
A little tip: If you want to buy a plot of land in Thailand, first dig an excavator shovel deep - it could be that not only soil comes to light!
If you are hungry in Thailand, then certainly not for long: street food stalls, night market, delivery service and beach vendors ensure that all culinary wishes are taken care of. Ubiquitous: plastic cutlery, plastic dishes and plastic bags to carry the fish balls wrapped in plastic bags. In the supermarket you get a bag when you buy a razor blade and nobody thinks for a moment. If I then say "no plastic bag", my counterpart at the cash register already stumbles. I stalled his automatic handle to the stack of bags and messed up the standard procedure. Uff - and I used to be a process manager.
Oh yes - there are even restaurants for take away, which pack the food in Styrofoam and then put it in the extra Tupperware bowls. You can do it that way - but you don't have to. Next time, they'll do it the same way again. It's always been like that. The carelessness in dealing with waste of all kinds often makes us shudder. Wonderful landscapes are adorned by fluttering plastic bags on cattle fences and mountains of garbage bags that wait indiscriminately in the landscape for their decomposition in 150 years. Strangely enough, the partly six-lane and freshly paved city streets to the palace and the military buildings always shine as if licked and at Swiss level. Same problem - different dimension. Garbage is huge business worldwide, and not all businesses are legal or even for the benefit of the environment. Actually, almost none.
In 2018, China banned the import of solid waste, including several types of plastics and other recyclable waste, out of concern for the health and environmental impacts of recycling (what do they actually do with their own e-waste?) Electronic waste, for example, contains toxic and carcinogenic chemicals and cadmium. After China imposed the ban, Thai imports of plastic waste increased from 70,000 tonnes in 2018 to 550,000 tonnes in 2020. It is believed that the actual amount is much higher. It is customary that falsely declared deliveries are neither checked nor objected to. A packet of colourful bills in your hand takes care of the rest.
In last year, a container declared as recycled paper was opened in the customs port of Bangkok after a foul-smelling liquid leaked. Under a 10 cm thin layer of paper, rotten slaughterhouse waste from Australia was found, which would have been buried somewhere in Thailand. A needle in a haystack, and for money people simply dump a load into the sea or run aground a 50-year-old barge with a few tons of problem waste.
The garbage mountain in Thailand has grown enormously with the military government since 2014. There are no sustainable concepts to reduce this littering or to avoid it in the future. Since 2018, various projects have been launched to build new recycling plants and put a stop to uncontrolled waste imports. The funds have been used up, nothing has happened. A few, small plants are in operation in the greater Bangkok area, but they are nowhere near enough to process the already accumulated garbage mountain. On the contrary, in the name of these facilities, even more waste freighters from all over the world will flood Thailand with garbage. An external investigation report shows that 80 percent of Thailand's 2,800 garbage disposal facilities do not properly dispose of their waste despite government policies and subsidies.
In 2020, the Thai government began pro forma to reduce imports of plastic waste by 50,000 tonnes per year. By 2028, only state-owned waste is to be processed. The Department of Industrial Works has already stopped issuing permits to import plastic waste, but factories in free zones can still import waste into Thailand as it is subject to different laws. There is no change in sight to these free zone regulations, so this lucrative loophole remains the guarantor for millions more tons of waste shipped to Thailand.
Meanwhile, the import of waste not only harms the environment, but also endangers the livelihoods of local small scrap collectors. The more waste is imported, the less they earn from the local waste they collect. Such a short-sighted and money-hungry approach without any thought of the effects gives me goose bumps. What you bury may no longer be visible. But it's there, and the bombs are ticking all over the country.
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