Plastic Bags

[TBWG]

Hi All

Came across this article on the BBC website, which I thought was rather forward thinking for a place like Rwanda, will Thailand take note?

I have come to the conclusion that Thais got used to throwing away packaging when things were wrapped in banana leaves and continue to do it without thinking of the consequences. I have also come to the conclusion that only falangs see litter and it is invisible to Thais!

Also why is it that shop assistants always want to double bag something that is already adequately packaged in the first place. Oh well TIT

Anyway here it is.........................................

This weekend Uganda joins the growing number of East African countries which have banned the plastic bag in an attempt to clean up cities and prevent environmental damage including blocked drains.

The ban covers the manufacture, import and use of plastic bags

Before your eyes become accustomed to the sight and the stench, the Chitezi municipal dump - which serves the Ugandan capital, Kampala - is like a scene from a painting by Bosch, a premonition of the Apocalypse, or a vision of hel_l.

High in the sky, great birds wheel around on the thermals. At first glance, they look like giant vultures, casting ominous shadows on the ragged human scavengers strewn around below.

But as they touch down on the grey, stinking moonscape, they seem to take on a ghastly sub-human form themselves. Like cowled priests bent over the rotting piles.

With their moth-eaten plumage, grotesque "alopecia-ed" heads, and sinister reptilian eyes, these are Africa's nightmare birds - marabou storks - fencing with their murderous bills over the carcass of a plastic sack they have ripped apart.

Flocking here in their hundreds, the ravenous birds are making a feast of Kampala's refuse, squabbling with their human competitors over the richest pickings.

Grey women in flip-flops - some with babes in arms - clamber over piles of jagged metal and broken glass. Men - dust-bathed and ragged - push and shove to be first in line when the next truck comes, bringing the very latest delivery of detritus from the city.

One of the ragged men, Ezekiel, told me he had worked at Chitezi every day from sun up to sun down, collecting plastic for the past 10 years - for 50 pence a day.

Ezekiel told me he had thought long and hard about how the city could better organise its ramshackle waste management. Nobody ever listened, he said.

But Ezekiel - a man at the very bottom of Uganda's social heap - still had lots to say about his country's most talked-about attempt to tidy itself up: Uganda's proposed ban on plastic bags.

Here they are called buveera, and they are everywhere.

Only a tiny fraction of them end up at Chitezi. Instead, once discarded, they are blown in the wind, washed into drains and water courses and eventually ground into the earth.

Uganda is blessed with some of the richest soil in Africa, but around the towns and villages it is laced with plastic.

New strata are forming - a layer cake of polythene and poisoned soil, through which Uganda's rains can never percolate.

Instead, dotted around Chitezi are stagnant pools where even the storks will not drink. Their fetid waters bubble with the methane brewing beneath them.

Bags are 'poison'

In the slums and shanties buveera are breeding grounds for disease.

With no mains water and no sewerage system, the bags are used as toilets. Flying latrines they are called, because when you have filled them, you throw them as far away as you can.

And when the rains come and wash them out there is a good chance that some little boy or girl sent on an errand will see a bag in the street and use it again, to carry firewood or maybe food.

In one of Kampala's slums I spoke to Bobby Wine - currently Uganda's biggest home-grown pop star, a man who styles himself Ghetto President and Hygiene Ambassador.

He still lives and works in the slums, and he has written pop songs about plastic carrier bags. He calls them poison.

He points to neighbouring Rwanda.

"Man", he says, "that's a poorer country than Uganda - but at the border if you have buveera, they tell you that you can't come in. Why can't we be like Rwanda?"

Well, the answer is that Uganda will be like Rwanda.

Pioneering legislation

After a fair amount of stalling, the government has just announced that from 1 July the manufacture, import and use of plastic bags thinner than 30 microns will be banned. All other polythene will be subject to a whopping 120% tax.

The decision is perhaps timely. Kampala is gearing itself up for a visit by the Queen in November for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting - or Chogm.

Everyone is talking about Chogm. The symptoms of Chogm fever - a rash of new buildings, a sudden outbreak of civic pride, general hyperactivity and the smell of new paint - are everywhere. And Chogm may have spelt the beginning of the end for buveera.

With disarming frankness, the country's environment minister, Jesca Eriyo, confessed to me that she was embarrassed by her capital city's lamentable standards of waste management; by Chitezi; by its sea of polythene, and its flying latrines.

Now, at last, they could all be headed for the exit door. And not just in Uganda. Neighbouring Kenya is introducing similar legislation. Tanzania wants to go even further and ban plastic drinks containers as well.

Despite its problems and its poverty, East Africa is blazing a trail which many in prosperous Middle England can only dream of following.

And the people I spoke to - the minister, the pop star, the shopkeepers of Kampala, or Ezekiel at the dump - all seemed happy to be pioneers in a post polythene age.

As one man in a corner shop put it: "Good riddance, who asked for all this plastic in the first place?"

Food for thought?

TBWG

[rafval]

it makes you wonder if oil is too cheap, altho if it ends up back in the ground it has to be better then ending up in the atmosphere, I find it hard to imagine Thailand doing such a practical thing but it obviously has to be done worldwide and as soon as possible.

[sureerat9]

it makes you wonder if oil is too cheap, altho if it ends up back in the ground it has to be better then ending up in the atmosphere, I find it hard to imagine Thailand doing such a practical thing but it obviously has to be done worldwide and as soon as possible.

if plastic bags are recycled as they are in my town in england along with cans newspapers

they can be used again for the good of us all,

[rafval]

it makes you wonder if oil is too cheap, altho if it ends up back in the ground it has to be better then ending up in the atmosphere, I find it hard to imagine Thailand doing such a practical thing but it obviously has to be done worldwide and as soon as possible.

if plastic bags are recycled as they are in my town in england along with cans newspapers

they can be used again for the good of us all,

it would be interested to know how efficient that is, same with paper I think, the amount of energy it takes to recycle things is sometimes as much as it would take to start from scratch, in any case far better to use the plastic bags as minimally as possible in the first place, which certainly doesnt happen in Thailand

[leisurely]

This has for a long time been my number one annoyance about life in Thailand. The ludicrous number of bags you are given for ridiculous purchases. I got a top up card in the 7 the other day and it came in a dinky little plastic bag. Call me stupid but why would I want one? I am going to take the card, scratch the numbers off and then throw the card away. The number of people who buy a can of drink, carefully put the ring pull into the recepticle on the counter, walk out with their coke in a bag and then throw it away once they are out the the shop are too many to remember. All it takes is a light shower where we live and the drains are overflowing, partly due to the polythene bags IMHO.

Wake up Thailand.

[Heng]

It's all relative. Here a good number of plastic bags are used once on the way home to transport groceries, goods, or whatever, and then again as a trash container. In the west, there is an entire industry devoted to producing plastic trash bags (here it's like 3 no name generic brands) for that sole purpose.

[eek]

The amount of packaging on things is also a bug bear for me too, esp for creams. Often a tiny item which wouldnt damage easy gets packed into layers of plastic and a overthetop fancy cardboard outer shell, which all just gets dumbed in the bin.

On the plastic front, I have noticed that when i say "mai ow tung, ka" or "mai ow lot, ka", I often get looked at like im a bit slow. Most so, if i refuse the straw. I already have a stock pile of the things that if i feel the need to use I can just wash out. The plastic straws are causing a lot of damage too.

There are also so many compact bags that sorta fold into themselves, that can be pulled out and used instead of getting a plastic one at the shop. (I realise not always practical, but at the same time, not sooo very hard to take along).

Would be great if to see more positive steps being taken.

[mogoso]

Would be great if to see more positive steps being taken.

Cheer up, there are biodigradeable plastic bags being put into use.

[mellow1]

Education,trash collection in rural areas,would help a lot.

A motto,such as KEEP THAILAND BEAUTIFUL,may install a real sense to national pride.It may cause people to become aware of their environment,and the destruction they have brought upon it.

[cooL_guY_corY]

mai sai toong kap.

seems straight forward

[chemist]

I agree that education is the way to go in this case. As a matter of fact, my wife's brother, who is studying at a university in Issan to become a teacher, told me that Thai children nowadays are tought about environmental stuff like this. But it will take time before anything changes. My home country Sweden is by many considered to be a fairly clean place, but it has not always been so. In the seventies and early eighties, the authorities and various environmental organizations launched campaigns, like the "Keep Sweden clean" initiative, to raise people's awareness, but it took at least a decade before real results could be seen. In Thailand's case I think we are talking about at least one more generation... As someone on this thread mentioned, many many grown up Thais grew up using for example banana leaves as containment material, and when the leaves had been used it was of course safe to just throw them away anywere. Now plastics are everywhere, and the throwing-away-anywhere behaviour continues with the synthetic stuff...

But what if...some highly respected member of the establishment (am I out of line here?) encouraged the Thai people to behave differently? Could the necessary change be accelerated then?

Finally, I just have to mention this: Some time ago I always complained to my Thai wife that "there was garbage everywhere in Thailand" and that I thought it was a horrible eyesore. She sometimes got upset, because she thought that I was putting her country down (and probably she just didn't care about the garbage). Now, however, after having been married to me (a farang) for quite a while, SHE is the one who is complaining! "Oh, look. Garbage EVERYWHERE!" And what about me? Well, I have started to get used to the trash lying around , which of course isn't a good thing. So, her eyes have been opened, and mine are beginning to close... I guess I now have to work on this issue myself...(I am not throwing garbage around, though.)

[WaiWai]

Truly, far too much unnecessary packaging.

Take a container of your own if buying take-away foods & your own bag when shopping. Some supermarkets encourage recycling of their plastic bags, but there's still so much more to taht could be done & not done. Commenting, ever so politely, to your Thai friends & family about some practices can help, too, as "chemist"'s post demonstrates.

Anybody need 500 small plastic spoons (which come non-optionally with the yoghurt) ?

[tayto]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2205419.stm

Ireland has now increased this levy to 22c per plastic bag.

Hard to see this levy ever working in Thailand, it would put every somtam lady and roadside shop out of business.

Can you imagine taking your plastic bag out of your pocket and asking the somtan lady to put your food in this please??????????

[WaiWai]

Can you imagine taking your plastic bag out of your pocket and asking the somtan lady to put your food in this please??????????

Why not ? I know the som tam vendor might get a bit of a shock initially , but it's normal practice in some other countries to take a bowl/plate or (re-usable) plastic container for your take-away.

[garro]

I am always amazed at the look of shock on shop assistant's faces when you say you don't want a bag or a bunch of straws. Crazy Farangs!

[lazeeboy]

Can you imagine taking your plastic bag out of your pocket and asking the somtan lady to put your food in this please??????????

Why not ? I know the som tam vendor might get a bit of a shock initially , but it's normal practice in some other countries to take a bowl/plate or (re-usable) plastic container for your take-away.

do away with plastic bags and then they;ll use paper ,more tree ,charge for plastic bags say 5b ,people will reuse them ,cut the use by 50% over night

[qwertz]

The Germans are very keen on recycling and most supermarkets sell a sturdy cotton shopping bag for €1.

It's washable, reusable and bio-degradable

I notice most people use them along with their folding plastic shopping baskets.

We get a yellow plastic bag in the mailbox every week which we stuff with plastic waste; it's picked up regularly by a private recycling firm.

There are regular pickups for every sort of unwanted household waste.

You can also dispose of the big furniture items, cookers etc. at local recycling depots.

Result - where I live is squeaky clean.

But only because the communist Germans were avid recyclers and the old network and mentality were still in place after Germany reunified.

[eek]

When i first came here i noticed that there were no places to recycle. After inquiring about it, I was informed that rubbish is sifted through and anything that can be recycled will be. I feel bad for those that do sift through all our junk, but its good at least that it happens. (At least i believe thats what happens. Maybe someone can confirm?)

May i suggest that it is worth considering that when throwing things out. Good to seperate where possible plastic from metal etc. Also better if you give them a quick wash out first before throwing away.

Edited July 7, 2007 by eek

[toasted]

As a couple of people have noted, it's the looks on the shop assistants faces when you say you don't want a bag that is priceless. At my corner shop I sometimes have to get some bread, which comes in a plastic bag, so when they try to put it in a second one, I point this out and get the same bemused looks.

Thew big chains of shops could do us all a favour by making it standard practice to ask every customer if they would like a bag, and not just give them one automatically. They'd save some money, and less bags would be tossed away within 100 yards of the shop.

[Carmine6]

When i first came here i noticed that there were no places to recycle. After inquiring about it, I was informed that rubbish is sifted through and anything that can be recycled will be. I feel bad for those that do sift through all our junk, but its good at least that it happens. (At least i believe thats what happens. Maybe someone can confirm?)

May i suggest that it is worth considering that when throwing things out. Good to seperate where possible plastic from metal etc. Also better if you give them a quick wash out first before throwing away.

Last year I saw a tv profile of a plastic recycling entrepreneur in Thailand who had built up from a tiny collection facility to a huge operation now. He has classes to educate (of course poor) people who then go out and collect the recyclables in their neighborhoods and bring them to his collection sites. There is probably a more organized system for the regular trash because the volume he does is pretty surprising. Think it goes to Japan because even out of the US, the recycled plastic goes to Japan.

While out on the ex's farm in Isaan I was cleaning up the trash around the house. An older gentlemen came up the driveway and started speaking to me in Thai. I thought he was just coming by to say hello so was doing the best I could to introduce myself and say who my girlfriend was, etc. My girlfriend then came out and said, "oh he wants the plastic bottles you picked up."

Edited July 7, 2007 by Carmine6

[eek]

Bought these today (ok, so i could not have bought it..but occasionally i treat myself. I really like them..oh bugger ..i cant help it if they put in a big freaking box. So shoot me!)Anyway!..

Prime example of unbelievable amount of packaging (20bht for size reference):

All for 12 capsules, around the size of a pinky nail. ZZzzz.....

edit: not exactly Thailand specific (although is a Thai brand), just having a general rant.

Edited July 9, 2007 by eek

[jumnien]

The more ecologically-minded nations always seem to be gourging on the earth's resources at a higher rate than the less ecologically-minded nations. I think recycling trash just leads to people buying more trash. By the way, did anyone else wonder how Snoop-Doggy-Dog wearing that ridiculously thick gold braid necklace and all the Burberry Bling at the Live Earth concert is supposed to cut down on global warming?

[eek]

There was a lot of debate about how useful the Live Earth concert was. At the UK one there was aparently some ecological info on stage before the concert kicked off, and it was reported that the crowds were unresponsive. It was commented later that the hope is that the concept behind the concert will raise awareness even if people have only come for the music. Who knows really if it will help much in the bigger scheme of things. Guess wait and see.

-------------

As for my post above on packaging, it think its a vicious circle really. If the consumer buys a product which has elaborate packaging (which i did today), then the suppliers will presumably keep spewing out fancy boxes. But if i bycott certain products, without it being a mass movement, i will hardly make a dent, thus no real affect for them to take notice. We, the consumer, i feel can do only so much. We have responsibiilites to try cut down on waste and recycle but at the same time we need companies and our governments to educate, adapt, and change.

[maipleur]

I was only thinking about Thailand being the land of plastic bags and rubber bands today.

If you go to 711, and buy a drink, you get the usual straw and a bag for your can, bottle or soft pack. I now just take it all out of the bag and leave it on the serving area. With a smile ofcourse. The staff then usualy pick it up and throw it in the bin.

Then you go to any outdoor eatery and ask for take away, which is then put in a plastic bag and a very very very tight rubber band that you have to cut off.

I hope this country starts realizing the waste and litter that is all over Thailand and starts some education into recycling.. If it was not for the "bag men" that sift through the garbage, the place would be a lot worse. So it really is the poor people that collect all of this "garbage" that are helping the enviro.