Polluters urged to act
Southeast Asia’s plastic ‘‘addiction’’ is blighting the world’s oceans, report Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Juarawee Kittisilpa, of Reuters.
GLOBALLY, some 8 million tonnes of plastic is dumped into the ocean every year, according to the UN Environment Programme. Five Asian countries — China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam and Thailand — accounted for up to 60% of the plastic waste leaking into the ocean, according to a 2015 report. There are calls for them to step up efforts to clean up the mountain of rubbish they are responsible for in the marine environment.
ON her lunch break, Bangkok office worker Chinapa Payakha emerges from a 7Eleven store with two plastic bags.
One holds a Big Gulp soft drink. The other carries her lunch, with a banana in its own plastic wrapper.
‘‘For office life, plastic bags are necessary,’’ said Chinapa (34), whose shopping habits illustrate the challenges facing antiplastic campaigners in Thailand, where plastic bags are handed out in abundance on any visit to a shop or market.
As World Environment Day was observed earlier this month and the United Nations calls for the ‘‘biggestever worldwide cleanup’’ of plastic pollution, experts are focused on Southeast Asia, home to four of the world’s top marine plastic polluters.
From major cities like Bangkok and Jakarta to beach resorts in the Philippines and Vietnam, plastic bags and bottles are the ubiquitous face of pollution in the region.
Globally, some 8 million tonnes of plastic is dumped into the ocean every year, killing marine life and entering the human food chain, according to the UN Environment Programme.
Five Asian countries — China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam and Thailand — accounted for up to 60% of the plastic waste leaking into the ocean, according to a 2015 report by the environmental campaigner Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Centre for Business and Environment.
The five economies have ‘‘generated exploding demand for consumer products’’, the report said, but lacked the waste management infrastructure to cope with the surge in plastic rubbish.
Three years on, a ‘‘trash emergency’’ on the Indonesian island of Bali and the Philippines’ decision to close the tourist island of Boracay showed governments were recognising the impact of plastic waste, said Susan Ruffo, Ocean Conservancy’s managing director for international initiatives.
‘‘But this is not just a government responsibility — corporations, civil society and citizens all have a part to play,’’ she said, adding that engagement was improving.
Plastic addiction
In Thailand, where two million tonnes of plastic waste is produced a year, plastic was an ‘‘addiction,’’ Geoff Baker, an antiplastic campaigner with Grin Green International, said.
‘‘Everywhere you go they just throw plastic at you,’’ said Baker, who caused a stir on social media in April when he covered himself in 700 plastic bags, walked into a 7Eleven and stared disapprovingly at people buying plasticwrapped bananas.
The recent death of a pilot whale in Thailand with 80 pieces of plastic rubbish in its stomach garnered headlines locally, but drew more attention outside the country.
Still, some Bangkok residents say companies are not doing enough to address the problem of plastic pollution.
Watcharapon Prabsangob, a 28yearold engineer, emerged from a store with a small bag carrying a coffee drink and straw. He said he tried to refuse the bag but the clerk moved too fast. He said businesses should do more to stop customers from taking plastic bags.
CP All, which has more than 10,000 7Eleven stores across the country, said it would launch a campaign this month to reduce plastic bags in some outlets in the southern province of Satun as part of a green tourism campaign.
It made no mention of the other 76 provinces including Bangkok, where 10 million residents use 80 million plastic bags a day, the capital’s administration says.
The food retailer Tesco Lotus said it would offer redeemable points to customers who did not take a plastic bag at checkout. But the scheme runs out at the end of the month.
Months after the military seized power in a 2014 coup, the junta made waste management a priority and set goals for 2021.
They included cutting the use of plastic bags and bottles in government agencies and businesses, and plastic bans in tourist destinations. A tax on plastic bags was also mentioned, along with a target to recycle up to 60% of plastic by 2021.
Baker said he had ‘‘yet to see any real change coming from these promises’’.
But a spokesman for the Government said it was committed to minimising plastic use.
‘‘We have been trying to raise awareness. People are so used to the convenience of plastic that they don’t think about the consequences,’’ the spokesman, Weerachon Sukhonpatipak, said.
Wakeup call
Other governments have set ambitious goals, too.
Indonesia, ranked second behind China in the 2015 study of mismanaged plastic waste from populations living near coastal areas in 192 countries, has pledged $US1 billion ($NZ1.42 billion) a year to reduce marine plastic debris by 70% by 2025.
There have been several attempts to impose taxes on plastic packaging to help address the waste problem. Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto has opposed the tax measures, saying in January it would hurt the local food and drink industry.
In the Philippines, the threat to marine life should be a ‘‘wakeup call’’ for people to cut their use of plastic, Jonas Leones, a senior official in the environmental department, said.
The Philippines, like its regional neighbours, has not imposed a nationwide ban on plastic bags, but some local authorities regulate their use. Some shopping malls have also replaced plastic with paper bags and encouraged reusable bags.
In Malaysia, the new Housing And Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin, has said she wanted to introduce a nationwide ban on plastic bags within a year.
Anchalee Pipattanawattanakul, an ocean campaigner with Greenpeace in Southeast Asia, said the region needed a coordinated strategy on plastic waste.
‘‘Asean says the problem needs to be addressed,’’ she said, referring to the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
‘‘But there is no action plan that will actually decrease the use of plastic’’.