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75 brands to stop providing plastic bags from January 1


Flashermac
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Around 75 brands and 24,500 distribution channels under the Thai Retailers Association will stop providing plastic bags from January 1 in a bid to reduce the whopping 9 billion, or 20 per cent, of plastic bags used in Thailand.

According to the Pollution Control Department, 45 billion plastic bags are used each year in the country – 18 billion, or 40 per cent, by local markets and street vendors, 13.5 billion, or 30 per cent, by retail shops, and another 30 per cent by department stores and supermarkets. Each Bangkokian uses eight plastic bags daily on average, which totals 80 million plastic bags per day. 

Association president Worawut Oonjai said that 75 brands under its umbrella joined forces to reduce plastic waste and signed an agreement to stop providing plastic bags on the fourth day of each month last year. 

Retail shops and department stores have from December 4, 2018, until August 31, 2019, been promoting non-plastic use with reward points. The effort resulted in a reduction of 2 billion plastic bags – a 4.6 per cent decrease.

After discussions with department stores, convenience stores and retail shops in November, the association decided to introduce a campaign titled “Every Day Say No to Plastic Bags”, under which all its members will stop providing such bags. 

Worwut believes this campaign will produce more effective results than the government’s road map to eliminate plastic bags from Thailand by 2028.

 

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30378996?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=internal_referral

 

Better get yourself an old fashioned cloth bag to take shopping with, the way it used to be in the UK and Australia around 50 years ago.

 

 

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Call me cynical but I think they have finally woken up to the fact that this will be the next cash cow. Plastic bags were effectively given away, now they can start charging for proper bags, and they won;t be cheap. At least until the market is saturated in knitted carry wear there's money to be made.

 

Open an environmentally friendly bag store now, you have a limited window.

 

 

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I still say

Trees and animals → swamp → buried swamp → very deep hole in the ground → millions of years → now oil in deep hole in ground → drilling by humans → make petrol, plastic bags and LP records → use plastic bags to carry shopping → bury plastic bags in hole in ground → wait a million years → perfect definition of recycling 

though not strictly vegan as there are animals in that swamp rotting away in the first place

And the problem is not the plastic bags, it's the people throwing them on the ground. In NZ you can walk for miles and miles and miles and never see a plastic bag, if you do it's dropped  by a Thai tourist. Look at any rice field in LOS and Laos and wot yer got?

Why not ban rice fields? No rice fields in NZ, no plastic bags on ground....

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Thais have always thrown their trash whever they felt like, but back in the 1970s and early '80s it was all paper or banana leaves. It disintigrated in a fairly short time, while the damned plastic bags last for centuries. It would be hard to go back to the old paper bags made from newspapers and magazines, since the print press is dying. Not many newspapers are around anymore, while even several of the top magazines have shut down. The younger generations only look at the internet or their iPhones.

Until a few years ago, you would see the scavengers out with their carts, scrounging up plastic bottles, plastic bags, aluminium cans, glass beer bottles, cardboard boxes, and old newspapers. They would even buy them from householders, though I always gave mine to them. Quite a few poor families used to make a living in this fashion. But little more than three years ago, the new Bangkok governor banned the recyclers and put a stop to it. What kind of genius was that bright idea, not to mention the poor folks who lost their only source of income?

 

 

 

 

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