Everytime I leave the house I come back with 25 plastic bags. I want to stop killing the Earth and start recycling. How?

Everytime I leave the house I come back with 25 plastic bags. I want to stop killing the Earth and start recycling. How?

The effects of plastic waste are extremely localized. And given that all the foreigners in Thailand couldn't do even a significant fraction of the damage the Thais will do anyway, it's not worth your time to worry about it. Your simple Western habits of getting every bit of trash into a trash bin are already doing more to control pollution than many Thais will do.

But if you must, take your 25 bags back out with you next time you go shopping are reuse them. Or buy a couple of string mesh bags to take with you when you go shopping. And if you live in an apartment, just try setting out one big bag of bags near the trash bins and see if someone picks them up for recycling as they will with the cans and the glass and plastic bottles.

Watch your dustbin.

You may well find that there is someone who comes round and sorts through your waste

looking for plastic bottles, bags etc and then sells them for recycling.

Everytime I leave the house I come back with 25 plastic bags. I want to stop killing the Earth and start recycling. How?

How about a cloth bag or three to take with you to the market, or shopping where ever you go?  Photo of a Villa Market effort back in 1993.  Bag ran baht 15 but you got a 15 satang discount every time you used it.  I still try to convince the new Villa Marker cashiers that this is true.  New management, so it doesn't work.

Also, we give a lot to the "lot kap khao" folks, the pickup trucks that come around daily, several times a day.  

Mac

DNFTT

We have a small foot pedal powered rubbish bin in the kitchen that is just the right size for Big C bags. Saves us from using the bags we buy for it.

I've found my local 7-11 re cycles all their waste stuff behind the shop, sadly they never ever empty it it must be 40 metres square and 2 metres high, always smells nice as i walk past!!

A few sentences I use:

"Mai sai toon, na krap" = Don't put in a bag.

"Sai toon nee, douai na krap" = Put in this bag please (showing one of the half-full bags I already have).

"Mee toon lau, na krap" = I have a bag already.

"Tee baan mee toon yeu lau, krap" = At home I have a lot of bags already (to explain why I don't want a bag).

It works most of the time, but smiling is important.

Good sentences. Bag is ถุง (toong) though. (If somebody's wondering, the 'oo' here is a short sound as in 'wood', not long as in 'cartoon' and the word takes the rising tone.)

I wonder why they feel the need to put almost only 1 item per bag when I could usually stick everything I buy in 1 bag and often do this?