The next ban of plastic, Thailand
According to reports, the Thai government announcing that it will ban imports of plastic waste by 2021; Thailand uses roughly 45 billion single-use plastic bags each year. The local market and street vendors account for about 40%, shops account for 30%, and the remaining 30% used in stores. Just one city in Bangkok, 80 million single-use plastic bags we’re used every day. And 80% of the garbage in the maritime space around Thailand comes from Thailand. The garbage flows from the river channel into the Mekong River and eventually flows into the sea. These include a large number of plastic bags, plastic cups, and straws. Plastic products cause serious pollution to the marine environment after entering the sea, especially for marine life.
Although under the influence of the new corona-virus, the government has kept people at home and also stopped businesses in production. Although there will be some ordinary waste reduction and there is still a lot of plastic waste generated. Even an increase of 62% in a month has increased by about 30% both domestically nationwide. Such a large degree of change really makes the local government more concerned about environmental protection. Even if people are staying at home, they will bring their daily necessities home, food boxes used for meals, packaging of foreign goods, etc., and a lot of them appear, thus generating more plastic waste. According to local residents: too many working hours during the epidemic lead to reduced cooking time, and more and more people like online shopping, there will be a large number of plastic packages such as bubble grids and packaging, resulting in more plastic rubbish. Although Thailand has encountered some difficulties against plastic waste. The Minister of the Environment Warawut said, Thailand will do its best to protect the environment.
With the mitigation of the epidemic, environmental protection organizations are still worried about plastic pollution in Thailand, because only Southeast Asia provides pollution data and Thailand is one of the major plastic pollution countries in Southeast Asia, although China is the first. Thailand Wijarn Simachaya, director of the Environmental Research Institute, believes that what Thailand has experienced is what this area needs to learn from.
At the same time, Thailand’s plastic pollution is terrible. The Thai Food and Drug Administration also announced that Thailand will ban domestic use of single-use plastic bags this year, and ban the use of super beads in all cosmetics since January 1, 2020. In addition, the Ministry of Pollution Control has also launched a 20-year action plan for the management of plastic waste, which will run from 2018 to 2037. This includes prohibiting Thai people from using seven types of plastic products: lids, oxidative decomposable plastic products, plastic beads, single-use plastic bags with plastic bags less than 36 mm thick(that is single-use plastic bags ), food containers made of polystyrene, and plastic straws. At present, major supermarkets and convenience stores have put up the “Say No to Plastics” brand, and encourage consumers to use environmentally friendly shopping bags to quit “addiction” to the use of plastic bags. Thailand began to take plastic pollution seriously.
