There are various issues of waste management in Thailand, including excessive plastic use, industrial waste, among others.
Solid waste
Municipal solid waste
Thais per capita generate an estimated 1.14 kg of solid waste per day—50 percent of it biodegradable.
According to Interior Ministry statistics, refuse nationwide in 2016 amounted to 27 million tonnes, up about 0.7 percent from the previous year. Of this, 4.2 million tonnes was generated in Bangkok.
The yearly figure in 2009 was 15.1 million tonnes. About twenty percent of total is generated in the
Bangkok Metropolitan Area
The Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) ( th, กรุงเทพมหานครและปริมณฑล; ; ), may refer to a government-defined "political definition" of the urban region surrounding the metropolis of Bangkok, or the built ...
(BMA)
Of the waste generated in 2015, only about five million tonnes were recycled. Only about eight million tonnes were handled in accordance with global best practices. Of Thailand's 2,500 dump sites, only about 20 percent are managed properly.
According to the Pollution Control Department (PCD), Thailand's primary waste watchdog, the nation faces serious solid waste management issues. Those issues are increasing. Wichan Simachaya, director-general of the PCD, said the volume of waste could continue to grow by 600,000 tonnes a year, due to increasing population and tourism.
Thailand's waste management plan calls for 75 percent of Thailand's total solid waste to be properly disposed of or recycled in some way by 2021, up from the current 49 percent. By 2021, the government and private sector plan to spend a total of 177 billion
baht
The baht (; th, บาท, ; currency sign, sign: ฿; ISO 4217, code: THB) is the official currency of Thailand. It is divided into 100 ''satang'' (, ). The issuance of currency is the responsibility of the Bank of Thailand. Society for Worldw ...
(US$5.1 billion) on waste management technology and public awareness campaigns. "We have fines for littering but no one seems to care," Wijarn said. "We need to step up law enforcement as well as teach people to recycle, reuse and reduce waste."
In
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
the roles in
solid waste
Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, ...
management (MSW) and industrial waste management are organized by the Royal Thai Government, which is then divided among the central government, regional governments, and local governments. Each government is responsible for different tasks. The central government is responsible to stimulate regulation, policies, and standards. The regional governments are responsible for coordinating central and local governments. Local governments are responsible for waste management in their governed area. Local governments themselves do not dispose of waste, but instead hire private companies that have been granted that right by the PCD. A major problem is lack of funding for waste management—the average Thai household pays less than one dollar a month to dispose of its solid waste.
The main companies are Bangpoo Industrial Waste Management Center; General Environmental Conservation Public Company Limited (GENCO); SGS Thailand; Waste Management Siam Ltd (WMS); Better World Green Public Company Limited (BWG). and Professional Waste Technology (1999) Public Company Ltd A leading resource recovery company is Wongpanit, who purchase mixed recyclables (paper, plastics, glass, aluminum, steel) at about 11,300
baht
The baht (; th, บาท, ; currency sign, sign: ฿; ISO 4217, code: THB) is the official currency of Thailand. It is divided into 100 ''satang'' (, ). The issuance of currency is the responsibility of the Bank of Thailand. Society for Worldw ...
per tonne.
These companies are responsible for the waste they have picked up from their customers before disposal.
Organic waste
The PCD estimates that in 2017 organic waste collected by municipalities across Thailand accounted for nearly two-thirds of the country's total waste output: a reported 7.6 million
tonne
The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...
s— 64%—of the refuse collected was organic waste. It is thought that a significant portion of this waste is not merely fruit and vegetable peelings, but edible surplus food. This in a nation where 400,000 to 600,000 children may be undernourished due to poverty, yet ten percent of all children are obese. Prevailing attitudes do not encompass
compost
Compost is a mixture of ingredients used as plant fertilizer and to improve soil's physical, chemical and biological properties. It is commonly prepared by decomposing plant, food waste, recycling organic materials and manure. The resulting m ...
ing or
waste sorting
Waste sorting is the process by which waste is separated into different elements. Waste sorting can occur manually at the household and collected through curbside collection schemes, or automatically separated in materials recovery facilitie ...
: 64 percent of the Thai population do not sort their rubbish according to one study.
Plastic waste
Thailand is a profligate user of one-time use plastics. Thais use 70 billion plastic bags a year.
The country is a major contributor, along with China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka,
of up to 60% of
plastic pollution
Plastic pollution is the accumulation of plastic objects and particles (e.g. plastic bottles, bags and microbeads) in the Earth's environment that adversely affects humans, wildlife and their habitat. Plastics that act as pollutants are catego ...
in oceans.
Thailand's 23 coastal provinces dump an estimated one million tonnes of garbage into the sea each year. Plastic bags make up 15%, plastic straws account for seven percent, and cigarette butts five percent. According to the
Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment
An environmental ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for the environment and/or natural resources. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of the Environment, ...
, 150 sea turtles, 100 whales and dolphins, and 12
dugong
The dugong (; ''Dugong dugon'') is a marine mammal. It is one of four living species of the order Sirenia, which also includes three species of manatees. It is the only living representative of the once-diverse family Dugongidae; its closest m ...
s die each year from discarded trash, half of which die from eating plastic bags.
In June 2017, Thailand pledged at an international forum to reduce plastic use. Thailand admitted waste mismanagement was the major cause of Thailand's poor record. Delegates representing Thailand's military government at the conference committed to put an end to the problem. Accordingly, it has included waste management in its 20-year national strategy.
In an easy step forward, Thailand's Pollution Control Department (PCD) got agreements from five major water bottlers to cease using plastic cap seals on drinking water bottles by 1 April 2018. A cap seal is the small plastic wrap molded over the bottle cap that must be peeled off before the bottle can be opened. Studies have found that bottles without them pose no hygienic health risk. The PCD aims to have them removed from all bottled water containers by the end of 2018. According to the PCD, Thailand produces 4.4 billion plastic drinking water bottles per year. Sixty percent, or 2.6 billion, of these bottles have cap seals. The weight of the plastic cap seals alone is around 520 tonnes per year.
On 21 July 2018 the Thai government kicked off a campaign to reduce the use of foam containers and
single-use
A disposable (also called disposable product) is a product designed for a single use after which it is recycled or is disposed as solid waste. The term is also sometimes used for products that may last several months (e.g. disposable air filter ...
plastic bags at fresh markets countrywide. Early indications are that those efforts have not been embraced by the Thai public.
Finally, a ban on single-use plastic bags with a thickness of less than 36
micron
The micrometre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: μm) or micrometer (American spelling), also commonly known as a micron, is a unit of length in the International System of Unit ...
s at major retailers was enacted to take effect on 1 January 2020. The ban exempts, until 2021, the 40% of total volume of single-use bags used at wet markets and restaurants. Bag manufacturers have cried foul, arguing that the solution to plastic pollution is proper disposal of bags and recycling. To make matters worse for the manufacturers, eight TV channels signed an agreement with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment on 2 January 2020 to blur images and footage of single-use plastic bags on-screen, as is done in Thailand for firearms, cigarettes, and alcohol. Thailand imported 480,000 tonnes of plastic garbage from abroad in 2018, and is set to import an additional 220,000 tonnes before existing contracts expire in September 2020.
Between 2014 and 2018 Thailand imported 906,521 tonnes of plastic from 81 countries, according to the
Commerce Ministry. Plastic imports nearly doubled between 2018 and 2019 due to increased Chinese imports.
Industrial and toxic waste
Thailand collected and processed the industrial waste of 68,261 companies. Its capacity to process industrial and toxic waste is 37.6 million tonnes annually, an estimated 2.8 million tonnes of which is toxic waste. Total capacity in 2015 was 25.8 million tonnes. The
Ministry of Industry A Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry or variations is a ministry that is concerned with a nation's trade, industry and commerce.
Notable examples are:
List
*Algeria: Ministry of Industry and ...
's Department of Industrial Works (DIW) plans to establish 15 regional waste management facilities throughout the country as detailed in its five-year waste management plan for 2015-2019.
Medical waste
The
Bangkok Metropolitan Administration
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration ( th, กรุงเทพมหานคร; ) (BMA) is the local government of Bangkok (also called ''Krung Thep Maha Nakhon'' in Thai), which includes the capital of the Kingdom of Thailand. The governme ...
's 500-bed General Hospital produces about 196,000 pieces of "medical waste" per month. About half of this waste consists of "clean products": packaging, PVC bags for dialysis solution, and other non-infectious items that could potentially be
recycle
Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the p ...
d or
upcycle
Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products perceived to be of greater quality, such as artistic value or environmental value ...
d. Thailand has thirty-three 500-or more-bed hospitals, as well as 321 other hospitals and health centres with between 11 and 250 bed nationwide, meaning the quantity of medical waste is significant.
Electronic waste
Thailand banned the import of foreign
electronic waste
Electronic waste or e-waste describes discarded electrical or electronic devices. Used electronics which are destined for refurbishment, reuse, resale, salvage recycling through material recovery, or disposal are also considered e-waste. Informa ...
(e-waste) in June 2019, the same year as China. In spite of the ban, new recycling factories have opened across Thailand, particularly in the eastern provinces, and
tonne
The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...
s of potentially hazardous e-waste are being processed. Since the e-waste ban, 28 new recycling factories, most processing e-waste, started up in
Chachoengsao Province
Chachoengsao ( th, ฉะเชิงเทรา, ) is one of Thailand's seventy-six provinces (''changwat''), located in eastern Thailand.
History
''Chachoengsao'' or ''Paet Riu'' ('eight stripes') is a province in eastern Thailand. It has a ...
alone. In 2019, 14 businesses in that province were granted licenses to process e-waste. In October 2019, the Thai legislature relaxed labour and environmental regulations for all factories, a boon to the e-waste industry. One provision of the legislation even exempts small companies from pollution monitoring. Concomitantly, a bill to strengthen e-waste restrictions has gone nowhere in parliament. An official of the
Basel Action Network
The Basel Action Network (BAN), a charitable non-governmental organization, works to combat the export of toxic waste from technology and other products from industrialized societies to developing countries. BAN is based in Seattle, Washington, ...
, which campaigns against dumping waste in poor countries, said, "E-waste has to go somewhere, and the Chinese are simply moving their entire operations to
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
. The only way to make money is to get huge volume with cheap, illegal labour and pollute the hell out of the environment," he added.
Waste water
In a 2004 study commissioned by the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
to examine the state of Thailand's infrastructure, the authors concluded that, "The worst infrastructure provision performance in Thailand is in waste water treatment....Virtually none of the...
aste water treatmentsystems are operating....only 3 waste water plants operate sporadically. The problem is that no user fees are assessed or collected and that households and firm
icare not required to connect to the systems. Water supply authorities,...have consistently refused to add waste water charges to their water supply bills, despite clear evidence from international experience that this is best practice."
At the end of 2016, the
Bangkok Metropolitan Administration
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration ( th, กรุงเทพมหานคร; ) (BMA) is the local government of Bangkok (also called ''Krung Thep Maha Nakhon'' in Thai), which includes the capital of the Kingdom of Thailand. The governme ...
(BMA) is considering the imposition of a waste water fee, pending endorsement by the BMA council. If approved, the move will impose fees on waste water release:
* Households producing waste water of 10–100 m
3 per month will be charged 30 baht
* State agencies, schools, companies, hospitals producting less than 500 m
3 will be charged 500 baht
* Discharging between 500-1,000 m
3 will incur a 1,000 baht charge
* Discharge exceeding 1,000 m
3 will be charged 1,500 baht
* Factories, hotels, and other large-scale users will pay four baht per cubic metre
The fees collected will be used to improve waste water facilities operated by the BMA.
In 2015 Thailand produced 9.5 million m
3 of waste water.
This was the equivalent of 150 litres per day per person.
Only 34 percent of the waste water was treated at one of Thailand's 93 treatment facilities before being returned to the environment.
One direct result was a corresponding deterioration of the quality of Thai coastal waters.
Environmental impacts
According to the
United Nations Ocean Conference
The 2017 United Nations Ocean Conference was a United Nations conference that took place on 5-9 June 2017 which sought to mobilize action for the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources.
The Earth's waters are s ...
Thailand produces about 50.000 tonnes of solid waste that finds its way into the sea each year.
Large quantities of coastal rubbish, especially in the upper reaches of the
Gulf of Thailand
The Gulf of Thailand, also known as the Gulf of Siam, is a shallow inlet in the southwestern South China Sea, bounded between the southwestern shores of the Indochinese Peninsula and the northern half of the Malay Peninsula. It is around in l ...
impact sea life and coastal mangroves. Mangrove swamps are cluttered with garbage. At one site, the ''Bangkok Post'' reported that, "Plastic bags, bottles, ropes, discarded noodle containers and even a rusty cooking appliance float in the water or are stuck in the mud under the green canopy."
The Thai Pollution Control Department (PCD) reports that the water quality of major rivers flowing into the upper Gulf of Thailand has seriously deteriorated in the past decade. The department found the lower
Chao Phraya River
The Chao Phraya ( or ; th, แม่น้ำเจ้าพระยา, , or ) is the major river in Thailand, with its low alluvial plain forming the centre of the country. It flows through Bangkok and then into the Gulf of Thailand.
Et ...
, which flows through Bangkok, contains bacteria and
nutrient pollution
Nutrient pollution, a form of water pollution, refers to contamination by excessive inputs of nutrients. It is a primary cause of eutrophication of surface waters (lakes, rivers and coastal waters), in which excess nutrients, usually nitrogen or ...
from
phosphate
In chemistry, a phosphate is an anion, salt, functional group or ester derived from a phosphoric acid. It most commonly means orthophosphate, a derivative of orthophosphoric acid .
The phosphate or orthophosphate ion is derived from phospho ...
s,
phosphorus
Phosphorus is a chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Ear ...
, and
nitrogen
Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at se ...
. Nutrient pollution causes algae to grow faster than ecosystems can handle, harming water quality, food resources for aquatic animals, and marine habitats. It also decreases the oxygen that fish need to survive. PCD categorised water quality at the mouth of Chao Phraya at Bangkok's
Bang Khun Thian District
Bang Khun Thian ( th, บางขุนเทียน, ) is one of the 50 districts (''khet'') of Bangkok, Thailand. Its neighbors, clockwise from the north, are Bang Bon, Chom Thong, and Thung Khru Districts of Bangkok, Phra Samut Chedi dist ...
as "very poor" and worse than in 2014. Nearby rivers, such as the
Tha Chin
The Tha Chin river ( th, แม่น้ำท่าจีน, , ) is a distributary of the Chao Phraya river, Thailand. It splits near the province of Chai Nat and then flows west from the Chao Phraya through the central plains, until it empt ...
in
Samut Sakhon
Samut Sakhon ( th, สมุทรสาคร, Pronunciation is a City in Thailand, capital of Samut Sakhon province. It is a stop on the Maeklong Railway. Samut Sakhon is 48 km from Bangkok.
It is part of the Bangkok Metropolitan Region ...
, were rated "poor".
PCD findings indicated large amounts of wastewater were discharged into the river from households, industry, and agriculture.
See also
*
Chemical waste
Chemical waste is any excess, unusable, or unwanted chemical, especially those that cause damage to human health or the environment. Chemical waste may be classified as hazardous waste, non-hazardous waste, universal waste, and household haza ...
*
Hazardous waste
Hazardous waste is waste that has substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. Hazardous waste is a type of dangerous goods. They usually have one or more of the following hazardous traits: ignitability, reactivity, co ...
*
List of solid waste treatment technologies
The article contains a list of different forms of solid waste treatment technologies and facilities employed in waste management infrastructure.
Waste handling facilities
* Civic amenity site (CA site)
* Transfer station
Established waste treatme ...
*
List of waste management companies
Although many entries in this List of waste management companies are Multinational corporations, the associated country listing is by location of ''Management HQ''.
Companies
See also
*LAWDC In the UK a local authority waste disposal company ...
*
List of waste management topics
Articles related to waste management include:
A
* Advanced Thermal Treatment
* Air Pollution Control
* Alternate Weekly Collections
* Animal By-Products Order
* Animal By-Products Regulations
* Anaerobic digestion
* Anaerobic Digestion & Bi ...
*
Recycling
Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the p ...
*
Soil Pollution
Soil contamination, soil pollution, or land pollution as a part of land degradation is caused by the presence of xenobiotic (human-made) chemicals or other alteration in the natural soil environment. It is typically caused by industrial activity ...
*
Toxic waste
Toxic waste is any unwanted material in all forms that can cause harm (e.g. by being inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through the skin). Mostly generated by industry, consumer products like televisions, computers, and phones contain toxic chemi ...
*
Water pollution in Thailand
References
External links
Pollution Control Department, Thailand
{{Thailand topics
Environmental issues in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
Water in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...