Plastic pollution is one of the major environmental problems in Thailand. According to Dr.SantivipaPhanichkul, Managing Director of Single Point Energy and Environment Company, Thailand produces at least 2.5 million tons of plastics each year (voanews.com). Imagine how muchthat is. This number is equal to 206,136 elephants or 13,888 blue whales. Only 0.7 tons million tons of plastics are recycled each year. Plastic pollution creates other pollution and problems such as landfill problem, water pollution, soil pollution, and air pollution. It does not only affect humans but also affects wild life.Thailand do not take care this problem seriously.
Where do unrecycled plastics go? Landfills are the first place they go. Landfills get up with waste every day. Most of the waste in Thailand comes from plastic. How many landfills we need to use for 1.8 tons unrecycled plastic each year? Plastic is a polymer so it uses a long time to decompose. It may use up to thousands of years to get done with this process. This means rate of decay is extremely far away from the rate of production. In a few years later all of the landfills will be fill up by waste. More and more waste will come into our home. Plastic does not only rot slowly but also decompose into tiny toxic substances. This pollutant contains a lot of chemicals that affect the environment such as benzene, vinyl chloride, and ethylene oxide. They get down into the ground water and also affect soil biological balance and organic process. This contaminated water gets into household water that we use to drink. All of those chemicals get into our body that causes cancer and other health problems. Another place that these pollutants go is air. They get burn and create a lot of chemicals that create huge damage to atmosphere including dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals. Humans are not only life on earth.Animals also get effect from plastic pollution. They should not be involved in this circumstance because they are innocent. They are not the people who create this pollution. Many of them get killed by thing that they didn’t do. According to The Nation News, at June 4, Phuket - Dwarf Sperm whale was killed by plastic bag (chemtrack.org). Veterinarian found plastic bags and bottle caps in its stomach. Both of these cause a problem to the whale’s digestive system. This is not only why the animal get killed. Another thing that affects to the animal is that plastic decompose very fast in the water. As we know that plastic decomposes into toxic substances. It pollutes water and kills marine life too. The problem is getting more and more seriously. It is no time left to playing around it.
Many organizations in Thailand tried to convince people to recycle, reuse, and reduce plastic bags, but it is not effective because most people did not care about it. They think they are not take part in it. Another reason is they did not get educated enough. Many of them do not know about why we need to recycle plastic, or what plastic causes to our Earth. Thailand should advertise and educate people more about this thing. Thailand needs to take care about this problem seriously.
Charging for plastic bag is the solution to solve this problem in Thailand. It is one of the most successful answers for this problem in many countries such as China, many states in United States, Wales, Korea, Japan, Russia, and especially Taiwan. Taiwan began Resource Recycling Program in1997. Charging for plastic bag is included in this program. According to Environmental Protection Bureau, Taichung County statistic, Taiwan recycled 554,200 tons of materials in 1998. This has gradually increased to 2,160,000 tons in 2006 (teepb.gov.tw). The recycling rate increased from 5.87% to 27.72% during this period (teepb.gov.tw). Charging on plastic bag can decrease the number of plastic bags because people will think before using it. They need to spend the money for it. No one wants to waste the money to thing they do not want. Some part of the money goes to the country to use for cleaning and recycling. Many people will disagree about this solution. They would say why they need to spend to the thing that they usually get free. First answer should be do you want to live in the country that fills up with waste. Reducing number of plastic bag is inverse proportional to developing our country because less money will spend on environmental problem. Everyone wants to live in the clean place without any toxic. Next answer would be how many money you spend on health problem. This solution makes our country cleaner, and less pollution. It direct affect to your health. The last answer is everyone need to take part in this problem not only government.
Plastic pollution is a major problem in Thailand. Thailand should start taking care about it too. Nowadays, you can see plastics everywhere either in the form of waste or goods. Goods transform to waste but waste not transform into goods.This means the number of waste increasing every day. Plastics affect to everything in the world even animals. All of the pollution gets more and more harsh. If this problem has not been solve properly, you can live properly too. Is it the timeto start take care of our world?
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