Your role in breaking Thailand’s plastic habit

The war of words between Manila and Ottawa over tonnes of Canadian trash shipped to the Philippines reveals the seriousness of the garbage problem facing countries all around the world. 
The recent row involved 103 shipping containers transported from Vancouver to Manila between 2013 and 2014. The containers were labelled as recyclable plastics but instead contained household waste. The Canadian government only agreed to retrieve the garbage after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to declare war. After weeks of protests, bargaining and ultimatums, the trash was finally shipped back to Canada last week.
The richer countries become, the more garbage their people tend to produce. Much of the waste is plastic, which pollutes the environment in many ways. Plastic trash, particularly petroleum-based items, takes several centuries to decompose. Burned, it pollutes the air. Discarded, it fouls our waterways and oceans. Here it is consumed by fish and other animals, decimating wildlife and posing a health threat to humans when catches reach the dinner table.
Thailand and its Asean partners Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia generate among the highest amounts of marine debris. Thailand ranks seventh among the world’s top 10 sea polluters. 
Wealthy nations believed they had found a solution by exporting their plastic waste to developing countries for recycling.  It is cheaper for them to pass the problem on to less wealthy countries – where laws protecting the environment usually far more lax. 
Until last year, China was the world’s leading recycler – importing nearly half of the planet’s plastic trash for three decades. But when Beijing banned the practice last year, other countries in Asia, Thailand included, began increasing their plastic waste imports, raising concerns about damage to their environments.
Worry is especially high in Thailand, where the casual use of single-use plastic already helps churn out 2 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, of which only 500,000 tonnes is recycled.
Last August, national parks around the country began banning single-use plastic and Styrofoam containers. More recently, shopping malls, convenience stores and large retailers have adopted measures aimed at reducing plastic waste. Some have stopped giving bags out one day a week, encouraging customers to bring their own. Others reward customers who decline the offer of plastic totes. Recently Central department stores stopped giving out plastic bags altogether, while Tesco Lotus has banned Styrofoam containers.
All this is good news for the environment and deserves praise. However, much tougher measures must be taken if we are to kick a plastic habit that is literally trashing our land and seas.
The bag bans have been well-received by the public, but now authorities need to follow up and double down. Thailand could follow the lead of other countries and prohibit free plastic bags at all stores, forcing customers to “pay ahead” for the environmental toll taken by the totes. This would encourage a habit of carrying their own bags, just as shoppers in many developed countries do.
Meanwhile, we can start replacing polluting petroleum-based plastics with their biodegradable equivalents.
The growing problem of trash choking our environment and food chains will not be solved overnight. But the link between our habits and the visible and hazardous problem is becoming more obvious with each trash-infested day. Most of us can do something to kick our casual addiction to plastic. Try setting an example by refusing a bag at the till. Such small actions can balloon into a social habit that begins cutting down the daily trash mountain, not adding to it.