BY ESTER FANG
Ester Fang is a first-year Middle East Studies student at SAIS.
The Kingdom of Thailand is among the world’s top five worst ocean polluters, with plastics as the main culprit.[1] This comes as no surprise as 68 percent of the estimated daily generated 70,000 tons of recyclables in the country is not properly managed by being sorted out, treated, and recycled. In fact, only 480 out of Thailand’s 2,450 public and private waste sites are able to properly manage their waste.[2] To address the country’s solid waste management issue, the government has recognized recycling as an effective approach and is working to incorporate it into citizens’ daily practice.[3] One recycling initiative many Thai communities already engage with is community-based waste banks. These waste banks are commonly implemented in Thai elementary and secondary schools and have proven incredibly effective in changing recycling habits and decreasing unmanaged waste. By working directly with youth and communities, waste banks are a bottom-up approach that fuel the behavior changes. This is vital to long-lasting recycling participation and awareness, providing a tenable model for the region.
A waste bank initiative is where students bring recyclables from their households to their schools on a designated day for sorting and collection; these items are then sold in bulk by the waste bank administrators, typically school administrators or teachers; and the profits from the sales are deposited into an individual savings accounts for each contributing student.[4] The recycling activities are undertaken by students and supervised by teachers.[5] Waste banks at schools allow students to learn about recycling and then immediately reinforce their new knowledge through implementation. Students are further motivated to participate because they also benefit from the additional cash flow.[6] This reframes recyclable waste in their minds from a cleaning burden into an beneficial opportunity, providing the positive reinforcement needed to influence wide-spread behavior change and perceptions of recycling.[7]
Recycling is inherently profitable in Thailand. Recycling businesses operate in a free market, typically carried out by the private and the informal sectors, e.g. sa leng waste pickers.[8] Waste banks are able to select from a range of waste buying companies that will compete to provide the best price for recyclables. A waste bank is also economically feasible. It only requires a one-time initial capital cost of setting up the storage and sorting area, measuring instruments, and passbooks to record amounts; operating costs like transportation and incentives are covered by the revenue from selling the recyclables.[9] These parameters allow waste banks to be easily replicable.
In 1999, through a collaboration between the private recyclable waste buyer company Wongpanit and the Bangkok municipality, the first official waste bank was introduced in Phitsanulok Province, Bangkok at the Watpanpi Municipal School. Wongpanit specifically targeted schools because of their convenient central location and readily available storage space.[10] The company’s involvement was essential in shifting community perspectives to the view that “waste is gold”.[11] Wongpanit provided leaflets of prices of recyclables to help students realize the value of waste.[12] This micro-economy system also provided students with life skills like saving income.[13] The guidance and contribution of Wongpanit was instrumental because of its innovative focus on students.
In 2004, the Roong Aroon School in the outskirts of Bangkok implemented a waste bank titled, “Zero Waste Project.” Within a year and a half, there was a 90% reduction in waste at the school from the initial baseline.[14] Roong Aroon School students also brought their recycling habits back home. Parents felt the pressure to sort and recycle, especially when being scolded by their own child.[15] Bolstered by their new recycling awareness, some parents who run businesses like restaurants also began separating their waste there.[16]
There still is room for improvement, however, in this school-based waste bank model. For example, some parents made their children sell their recyclables directly to a recyclable waste junk shop instead of taking recyclables to school waste banks so parents can have immediate control of the profit.[17] Some parents claim they do this because they are not willing to store recyclables in their home until the next school sorting day.[18] This has caused the profits of waste banks to become more unpredictable, which may impact their long run financial sustainability.[19] This is additionally troubling because some children, encourage by parents, are scavenging to find additional recyclables for profit.[20] Scavenging often exposes an individual to hazardous waste that could lead to health risks.[21]
Although waste banks were first structured to be implemented at schools, they have since been scaled and used in larger communities. In these situations, community members still collect and sort, but the municipality is more involved as it is the representative intermediary that sells sorted materials to a recycling company.[22] In a majority Buddhist country like Thailand, greater recycling awareness through waste banks also contributes to the religion’s concept of merit rousing—making people want to do good deeds by demonstrating the action’s benefits and merits—and can appeal widely to the community to participate.[23] In some communities, waste banks also provide insurance structures through the provision of funeral-assistance benefits for waste bank participants.[24] As waste becomes a resource, communities are realizing it can be effective in financing other goals.[25]
Waste banks contribute to diverting recyclables from landfills by incentivizing recycling. Since the first waste bank started in Phitsanulok, 5,500 waste banks have been implemented throughout Thailand in universities, communities, offices, hospitals, army camps, etc.[26] This idea has also reached neighboring countries like Vietnam and Indonesia.[27] Through this simple community-based waste bank, Thailand has found a way to implement vital long-lasting behavior change by targeting youth; sorting at source; and uniting the private, civilians, and some state involvement in one common force to handle recycling.
[1] Patpicha Tanakasempipat, “Southeast Asian Nations, Among Worst Ocean Polluters, Aim to Curb Plastic Debris,” Reuters, June 21, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asean-summit-environment/southeast-asian-nations-among-worst-ocean-polluters-aim-to-curb-plastic-debris-idUSKCN1TM0J5
[2] Adisak Singseewo and Kamolwan Klaoklang, “Promotion of a Waste Recycling Bank in Schools: A Case Study in a Municipality School in Thailand,” New Trends and Issues Proceedings on Humanities and Social Sciences 4, no.1 (2017): 330.
[3] Samponporn Suttibak and Vilas Nitivattananon. “Assessment of Waste Recycling Performance: A Study of School Garbage Banks in Thailand.” GMSARN International Journal 2. (2008): 83.
[4] Janya Sang-Arun et al., “Municipal Solid Waste Management and Recycling Businesses in Thailand: Current Situation and future possibilities,” The Economics of Waste Management in East Asia, eds. Masashi Yamamoto and Eiji Hosoda (London: Routledge, 2016), 105.
[5] Suttibak &Nitivattananon: 84.
[6] Tharee Kamuang, “The Kingdom of Thailand” (UNCRD country chapter on State of the 3Rs in Asia and the Pacific, Japan, 2017), 10.
[7] Example of waste bank ledgers Figure 4.1 in Chanathip Pharino, Challenges for Sustainable Solid Waste Management: Lessons from Thailand, ed. Asit K. Biswas (Singapore: Springer, 2017), 56.
[8] Sang-Arun et al.,105.
[9] Suttibak &Nitivattananon: 87.
[10] Panate Manomaivibool, “Municipal Solid Waste Management in Bangkok: The Cases of the Promotion of Source Reduction and Source Separation in Bangkok and in Roong Aroon School” (IIIEE Master’s Thesis, Sweden, 2005), 66.
[11] Kamuang, 10.
[12] Ibid, 10.
[13] Sang-Arun et al.,105.
[14] Manomaivibool, iv.
[15] Ibid, 65.
[16] Ibid, 53.
[17] Ibid, 65.
[18] Suttibak &Nitivattananon: 87.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Amonchai Challcharoenwattana and Chanathip Pharino, “Co-Benefits of Household Waste Recycling for Local Community’s Sustainable Waste Management in Thailand,” Sustainability 7, (2015): 7420.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Pharino, 55.
[23] Manomaivibool, 48.
[24] This is based on the conditions that they had a minimum of 16.27 USD in their waste bank account at the time of death, and that the member did sell recyclables to the waste bank in the last month of their death. Ibid: 7422.
[25] Manomaivibool, 60.
[26] “Personal Data,” Wongpanit, accessed November 1, 2019, http://www.wongpanit.com/about
[27] The success of the implementation in these other countries is not certain and is not discussed in this article. Still the transfer of the Thai waste bank initiative beyond its borders is due to its in-country success and evidence of its international appeal. Pharino, 50.
PHOTO CREDIT: Free use image from Canva Pro.