Bangkok -- 8,000+ tons a day of garbage!

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) has just put out a new video on Facebook saying Bangkok generates more than 8,000 tons per day of garbage/waste! (AFAIK, much of that gets shipped to several very large landfills away from Bangkok.)

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/prbangkok/videos/1252606072291118/

 

But the equally interesting part is, much of the video is about encouraging people to begin separating out their household waste into different categories, such as keeping food waste in a separate bag.

 

The video has a nice image showing three different colored garbage receptacles for different types of waste.... The only problem is, I've never actually seen those kinds of containers used in residential neighborhoods here, and only have ever seen them in shopping malls and such.

 

So I wanted to ask, does anyone living in Bangkok either in homes, condos or apartments actually have these kinds of containers in which they can separate out their household waste? And if so, do they actually get used in the intended manner?

 

 

I know my central BKK residential neighborhood does not. Heck, residents on my soi don't even have any Bangkok-government provided trash containers. Everyone seems to use their own provided baskets, garbage bins, or just leaving out plastic bags filled with garbage along the soi. No separation of garbage that I can see whatsoever!

 

The BMA trucks just come along every couple days, and AFAICT, just dump everything together into the same garbage truck -- although the workers do seem to separate out some things themselves that can provide a source of income, such as trying to separate out recyclable glass bottles and cans.

 

I think I remember reading at some point that the BMA was supposedly going to begin a trial somewhere in some very limited areas to do the three-bins separation approach. But I never saw anything more about that or what became of it.

 

Thailand seems somewhat far behind other places in terms of trying to limit the amount of waste going into landfills, perhaps because it has a lot of still undeveloped areas where the mountains of trash can be deposited away from big population centers. But even so, those kinds of sites then have problems with methane gas fires, groundwater pollution and other ecological issues.

 

 

[Snugs08]

Bins can and often will be looted a few times before it reaches the landfill from my experience, an extra time if you're in a condo, so you should make a small effort to separate things out, even if you witness the auntie at Central mall empty all three recycling drop points into the same big black bag each evening, the fact they are separated out within, and bags transparent, make it much more probable for intercept. 

 

If you can't be arsed, just do the minimal, at least bag things like broken glass, vacuum dust, anything dangerous,  or food waste away from things that can easily be recycled, I think at the price per kg the local recycling plants are paying they probably ain't going to peel a nappie full of poo off a can of chang .  And keep cardboard from your Lazada addiction shipments separate - pays the most so just leave it by the bin flattened out - a few cuts with a utility knife sorts even an LCD tv box..

 

It's pretty easy here without going thornberg

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I already separate out all our glass bottles, recyclable plastics and clean cardboard and hand them over to a neighbor who sells them to a recycler...

 

But that's just something I do as a personal choice... The BMA has really never done anything to encourage or facilitate that kind of separation by residents here AFAIK -- which was the point of my post.

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[steven100]

has anyone ever had the terrible misfortune of walking behind a Soi garbage truck for couple of hundred meters?    they are the most disgusting smelly trucks you could ever encounter .... 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 minute ago, steven100 said:

has anyone ever had the terrible misfortune of walking behind a Soi garbage truck for couple of hundred meters?    they are the most disgusting smelly trucks you could ever encounter .... 

 

I'd say there's some truth to that!  ????

 

And believe me, it doesn't get any better when the loads of hundreds and hundreds of those all end up getting trucked to and dumped in huge landfills in some adjoining provinces.

 

[steven100]

5 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

I already separate out all our glass bottles, recyclable plastics and clean cardboard and hand them over to a neighbor who sells them to a recycler...

you reminded me of an indecent some years ago when I went to back to Australia,   I was renting a room in this house and I placed the rubbish bins out one night ready for collection ....  from memory, there's a green lid bin and a yellow lid bin which is for recyclables.  Anyway ... long story short ... next day there was a warning sticker on the yellow bin saying if I continue to place non-recycled waste in the yellow bin the council would not collect the bins anymore ... or something similar ....   I kept stuffing up what was recyclable and what was not ....  haha

[Lemsta69]

we have one green bin and one blue bin on every floor of my condo. no markings so I've no idea what each is for; the condo management didn't explain this when I moved in.

 

I've stopped caring about this sort of stuff now and just follow what the other condo residents do, ie whatever they feel like.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Thailand seems to have a pretty short attention span when it comes to environmental issues.....one related example:

 

A couple years back, there was a big push at the government level to reduce/eliminate the profligate use of non-biodegradeable plastic bags at the supermarkets and elsewhere...

 

And for a time, the big retailers stopped using them, switched to paper bags or boxes and began encouraging people to bring/use their own reuseable cloth bags....

 

But these days, when I order home delivery groceries from Tops, I get about 10 of the typical small plastic grocery bags every time, each containing just a couple of items. And those and other mountains of plastics used here end up clogging up the landfills.

 

On the flip side, to their credit, when I order home delivery groceries from Villa Market, for some time now, everything comes packed in cardboard boxes that they've reused from products delivered to the store. And then get recycled further by me once I'm done with them.

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

A couple of graphics I had saved from a BMA report back in 2020:

 

Here's where the the garbage from Bangkok goes, at least as of 2020 (back then, they were claiming 10,000 tons per day). Nakhon Pathom seems to get the bulk of BKK's trash:

 

 

And here's the color key code to the different types of garbage containers and what's supposed to go in them:

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Some other background regarding Bangkok garbage from back in 2020:

 

 

[Will B Good]

Imagine how much there would be each day if it were all collected.

[h90]

36 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Thailand seems to have a pretty short attention span when it comes to environmental issues.....one related example:

 

A couple years back, there was a big push at the government level to reduce/eliminate the profligate use of non-biodegradeable plastic bags at the supermarkets and elsewhere...

 

And for a time, the big retailers stopped using them, switched to paper bags or boxes and began encouraging people to bring/use their own reuseable cloth bags....

 

But these days, when I order home delivery groceries from Tops, I get about 10 of the typical small plastic grocery bags every time, each containing just a couple of items. And those and other mountains of plastics used here end up clogging up the landfills.

 

On the flip side, to their credit, when I order home delivery groceries from Villa Market, for some time now, everything comes packed in cardboard boxes that they've reused from products delivered to the store. And then get recycled further by me once I'm done with them.

 

are these plastic bags really the old style or some modern biodegradable?

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

3 minutes ago, h90 said:

are these plastic bags really the old style or some modern biodegradable?

I've seen both...

 

The kind I used to get from Villa before they did away with them (at least for home delivery) did degrade fairly quickly.

 

The ones I get from Tops these days for home delivery show no signs of degrading.

 

And of course, all the plastic bags and cartons that get used by most Thai food outlets here appear to be the standard, non-degradeable kind.

 

Though I have noticed various farang oriented food outlets in recent times beginning to use more non-plastic packing materials.

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

7 minutes ago, Will B Good said:

Imagine how much there would be each day if it were all collected.

BMA claims to do a pretty good job of collecting most of the garbage generated here.... I'm guessing, a far greater percentage than most other provinces...

 

[ChipButty]

We have to put the trash at a collection point on the corner of the soi, the bins keep getting nicked it's us neighbours who keep buying the bins, not the orbortor

[Polar Bear]

In my soi in Bangkok, we have blue bins for garbage and yellow for recycling. No one puts recycling in the yellow bins. They are filled with garbage like the others. Some people do separate out stuff that's potentially recyclable (including me), and leave it in bags next to the bins. It's usually gone before the truck comes, but if it's still there, the workers tie the recycling bag to the side of the truck.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

3 minutes ago, Polar Bear said:

Some people do separate out stuff that's potentially recyclable (including me), and leave it in bags next to the bins. It's usually gone before the truck comes, but if it's still there, the workers tie the recycling bag to the side of the truck.

 

I don't see folks in our area leaving out separate small bags (maybe that's because they end up getting taken first). But I have seen the BMA trucks with the big bags hanging off the sides of the trucks.... And late at night when the BMA trucks come, I oftentimes can hear the workers klanking around with the glass bottles they've retrieved.

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

8 minutes ago, Polar Bear said:

In my soi in Bangkok, we have blue bins for garbage and yellow for recycling. No one puts recycling in the yellow bins. They are filled with garbage like the others.

 

That's probably one reason why the BMA hasn't utilized that approach on any kind of broad basis. That the average Thai probably won't follow the gameplan....

 

Unless of course, as with the example Steven mentioned above, the trash collection authority were to start getting tough and refusing to collect garbage from those breaking the rules... Which, unfortunately, would create a whole separate set of problems.

 

Back in the U.S. where I used to live, I think it also took some time and a lot of effort to get the general public to begin following a trash separation scheme.

 

Where I lived, in the end, the city issued the separate colored containers and had separate trucks come along to collect each... And it was all automated, with the new garbage trucks having an automated arm that reached out, grabbed and dumped the container, and then lowered it back to the curb.

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[h90]

20 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

I've seen both...

 

The kind I used to get from Villa before they did away with them (at least for home delivery) did degrade fairly quickly.

 

The ones I get from Tops these days for home delivery show no signs of degrading.

 

And of course, all the plastic bags and cartons that get used by most Thai food outlets here appear to be the standard, non-degradeable kind.

 

Though I have noticed various farang oriented food outlets in recent times beginning to use more non-plastic packing materials.

 

 

 

Theoretically, speaking as technician: Plastic bags are basically oil. You can convert them back into oil with a loss of 30% (which is heat which could be used) or you can burn them to generate electric instead of burning gas.

 

But if the plastic bag comes with half the lunch inside you can't do much with it.

[h90]

4 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

I don't see folks in our area leaving out separate small bags (maybe that's because they end up getting taken first). But I have seen the BMA trucks with the big bags hanging off the sides of the trucks.... And late at night when the BMA trucks come, I oftentimes can hear the workers klanking around with the glass bottles they've retrieved.

 

 

We put glass+plastic bottles + metal in separate bags...easy for them.

[proton]

Bin men here are great they will take any old rubbish including garden waste. Mrs gave them a front door once ( cut in half) and they had that. Better than the UK

[h90]

3 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

That's probably one reason why the BMA hasn't utilized that approach on any kind of broad cases. That the average Thai probably won't follow the gameplan....

 

Unless of course, as with the example Steven mentioned above, the trash collection authority were to start getting tough and refusing to collect garbage from those breaking the rules... Which, unfortunately, would create a whole separate set of problems.

 

Here they take everything....including all we removed when we took out some walls.....Also 9000 Baht worth of metal waste our staff wanted to sale but put at the waste place till he has time.....

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Just now, h90 said:

We put glass+plastic bottles + metal in separate bags...easy for them.

One separate bag for all those various recyclables? Or separate bags for each different type?

 

[h90]

Just now, proton said:

Bin men here are great they will take any old rubbish including garden waste. Mrs gave them a front door once ( cut in half) and they had that. Better than the UK

Better than in Austria.....In Austria they look into your bin and report you if you did something wrong

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Just now, h90 said:

Better than in Austria.....In Austria they look into your bin and report you if you did something wrong

That's one way of enforcing the rule!  ????

 

But I don't think Thai culture is inclined to go down that road....

 

[Yellowtail]

I think New York City has about 2.4 times the population of Bangkok and generates about 5 times as much garbage...

[h90]

1 minute ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

One separate bag for all those various recyclables? Or separate bags for each different type?

 

Well it is glass and pet bottles mixed....but all clean...nothing broken. Basically only water bottles and soda bottles with some odd beer bottle from time to time.

[3NUMBAS]

any recycling ?what %

[h90]

1 minute ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

That's one way of enforcing the rule!  ????

 

But I don't think Thai culture is inclined to go down that road....

 

Well it is not free in Austria...pretty expensive so they are a paid service. They should ignore minor things, and if big things, just not take it.
And it is usually small misunderstandings of people who try to make everything right. At immigrant places all is mixed, nothing separate and they take it without complain.
Things like that cause avoidable anger. (I am not speaking about people who make it wrong on purpose, I speak about the elderly lady who make a mistake)

[Yellowtail]

I think Bangkok has about 2.24 times the population of Berlin, and generates about 2.16 times as much garbage...