Minister wants even more environmentally friendly festival
The Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, General Surasak Karnjanarat, has urged all ministerial agencies to encourage people to reach an even greater use of environmentally-friendly materials for their flowery floats in the Loy Krathong Festival on Friday.
Apart from using materials that are easily degradable and don’t harm the environment, the minister also urged people to use smaller floats and to share floats, in order to reduce the amount of garbage that city workers have to handle and dispose of the next day.
One report said that out of the 929,329 Krathong floats collected in Bangkok after the festival in 2008, a total of 811,332 – or 87 per cent – were made of banana stalks/leaves or other natural materials and 117,997 (13 per cent) out of polystyrene foam.
After authorities campaigned for people to use more natural or environmentally friendly materials, the number of those made of polystyrene dropped gradually until 2016. Then, a follow-up report showed that of 661,935 Krathong floats collected after the festival in Bangkok, 617,901 (93.7 per cent) were made of banana stalks/leaves or other natural materials and only 44,034 (6.7 per cent) from polystyrene.