Going round in rubbish management circles
Junta leader Gen Prayut Chano-cha has been featured in the current campaign to reduce the consumption of plastic bags. The campaign, being run by the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, urges people to use cloth bags instead.
The generalissimo is pictured holding a cloth bag within a frame meant to be shared on social media. The public are encouraged to download one of two frames from the department’s website, insert their own photo and share.
People are asked not to use plastic bags on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, which brings up the question: Why not every day?
The department claims that its ongoing campaign in partnership with hypermarket operators to reduce plastic bag consumption resulted in a reduction of 166 million plastic bags last year.
That may sound like a lot, but statistically Thais use over 70 billion bags each year.
A major problem with our way of doing things is that officials are fond of launching “information” campaigns by signage rather than “action” ones. These info campaigns tend to fizzle out very quickly.
Information alone will not increase public consciousness leading to action as experiences over past decades show.
But action is shunned if it is feared to antagonise businesses. The matter of taxing packaging, for instance, has been on the drawing board for decades and remains there to this day.
And businesses will not take action that “inconveniences” customers.
There’s simply no real political will and genuine interest to tackle the problem among the top rungs of society. It is always commercial interest, not public good, that is foremost in mind when attempts are made to tackle social problems.
No wonder Thailand has been going
round and round in circles over waste management for decades, trying to find the best model to fit its people’s psyche and societal norms with little success. And it is not for a lack of role models. I was in Taiwan recently on a leisure trip with family. When we landed, I had no idea I was in one of the most successful countries for garbage management. I expected it, as an advanced country, to be clean and it is. But I did not realise there was so much more.
The first thing I noticed was that convenience stores do not offer plastic bags. You pay if you want one.
My interest was piqued when we heard what sounded like a jingle from the street wherever we went. My children thought it sounded like a mobile ice cream vendor.
The jingle was actually a tune from a famous Polish classic The Maiden’s Prayer. It signifies the arrival of a garbage collection convoy. The convoy normally comprises a truck for general garbage, one for food waste and another for other recyclable waste.
Upon hearing it, residents troop to the appointed venue in their neighbourhood where they deposit pre-sorted garbage in different trucks.
Just over three decades ago Thailand was in the race to become an “Asian Tiger”, a newly industrialised country, together with Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia.
Today, Taiwan and South Korea are way ahead, leaving us still to dream of a 4.0 future.
During that period of impressive economic growth, Taiwan was also saddled by the usual environmental blight with garbage heaps on street corners and “trash mountains” around the country.
Today, they are nowhere to be seen. However, it was not just its newfound wealth that turned the country around environmentally.
The tipping point for Taiwan came when the Nationalist government loosened its authoritarian grip on power and gave way to democracy which saw the spawning of civil society movements.
A band of Taipei housewives decided to take matters into their own hands and clean up the city. They took to the streets and demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency impose a municipal recycling system.
At first, officials shrugged off their pestering, figuring their efforts would
fizzle out soon. But the women persisted. Armed with statistics proving that 40% of municipal waste could be recycled and 35% could be composted, they convinced the government in 1989 to pass legislation to hold businesses more accountable for the collecting and disposing of their non-degradable products.
Fees were imposed on recyclable products with the money going to support recycling programmes that relied on community residents, public cleaning crews and trash collectors.
Civil society groups launched educational campaigns around the city and in schools.
It took Taiwanese awhile to get used to sorting garbage and bringing them to the trucks. But with incentives and penalties, they eventually did.
Today Taiwan boasts of recycling 55% of their daily waste, far outstripping the United States’ 35%. Meanwhile, their raw food waste helps feed locally raised pigs and cooked food waste goes to composting as fertilisers.
The country generates less waste per capita than most OECD member states.
Valuable lessons can be learned from the Taiwan model.
The first is government is generally not very good at motivating citizens on matters of public good. Civil society should be encouraged and supported to play a leading role.
Second, democracy is important to encourage creative thinking and public participation in solving problems affecting everyone.
Third, public consciousness can be cultivated and discipline learned if there is political will and public-private partnership working toward a common goal for public good.
Fourth, programmes must be sustained, action taken and citizens gotten involved.
At this point, readers might be snickering over whether it is possible for Thailand to achieve this goal at all. But I like to remain positive.
There’s no denying the issue is a complex one. But people create the problem; people can solve it, if they really want to.
The question is whether the government really wants to and allows people to help solve it.
Wasant Techawongtham is a former news editor, Bangkok Post.