Sat, Sep 06, 2014 page9

• Thailand works to defuse its threatening time bomb of trash

  • By Aidan Jones / AFP, BANGKOK
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  A blaze at a vast trash dump home to 6 million tonnes of putrefying garbage and toxic effluent has kindled fears that poor planning and lax law enforcement are tipping Thailand toward a waste crisis. Locals had long pressed for the closure of the foul-smelling Praeksa landfill site, which is wedged between a cluster of industrial parks on the fringes of Bangkok.

  However, a ferocious eight-day fire that cloaked the eastern suburbs of the capital in poisonous smoke earlier this year thrust Praeksa to the heart of a national debate over rubbish.

  Bangkok — a sprawling city of 12 million and counting — produces about 10,000 tonnes of waste a day, a substantial portion of the 27 million tonnes generated each year across the kingdom.

  The ruling junta has put waste disposal high on its to-do list, recognizing that poorly regulated pits are fast filling up and prone to disaster.

  Thailand is not alone in struggling to tame its trash.

  From Jakarta’s Bantar Gebang dump to Manila’s ‘smokey mountain,’ open landfills blight Southeast Asia’s booming megacities, as urban planners labor to keep pace with rapid urbanization and industrial growth. Experts say that these dumps are a time bomb for the environment and the increasing number of communities forced to live with them.

  Open dumping “offers a quick and easy solution in the short run,” the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific says in a study, warning of severe environmental problems and long-term health issues caused by contaminated water and land.

  CLOSE THE DUMP

  Of Thailand’s 2,500 open rubbish pits, just a fifth are properly managed, according to the kingdom’s Pollution Control Department.

  The rest are at the mercy of illegal dumping — including of hazardous waste — fires and seepage into nearby land and water systems.

  The department says the mid-March blaze at Praeksa, which has caught fire several times since, was just one of 10 raging every month at dumps across Thailand. A lack of enforcement is to blame, says Nicha Rakpanichmanee of Ecological Alert and Recovery Thailand (EARTH), adding that the whole waste disposal chain is skewed toward “anyone who can pay.”

  She says that 1.9 million tonnes of toxic waste goes unaccounted for after leaving factory gates every year, with many factory owners flouting laws to save on the costs of safe disposal and landfill operators willing to turn a blind eye to the illegal dumping of toxic runoff.

  “The people who will remain with the problems are the poorest who cannot move,” she says of the communities forced to live with contaminated water and land.

  For residents near Praeska, in Samut Prakan Province neighboring Bangkok, the intensity of the blaze has left them in little doubt that inflammable chemicals swash around the fetid mounds of trash. The landfill is meant for household waste only.

  “I want it closed,” 85-year-old local resident Jad Pimsorn said. “I have lived with it, but I don’t want my children and grandchildren to live with it, too.”

  The dump operator denied he had allowed chemicals to be illegally stashed at his site.

  “However, there were several companies operating the pit before me,” owner Krompol Samutsakorn told reporters.

  TRASH TALK

  Until the Praeksa blaze, talking about trash was a conversation few wanted to have.

  Currently Thai households pay less than half a dollar a month to get rid of their waste.

  Local authorities say that leaves them short of cash to invest in modern, environmentally friendly incinerators or recycling plants, but they are reluctant to raise rates on would-be voters in already poor neighborhoods. That could be about to change, with military ruler General Prayuth Chan-ocha vowing to tackle the kingdom’s garbage problems.

  “Can people throw away garbage in outer space?” he asked in a typically enigmatic weekly television address to the nation on Aug. 8. “They cannot... They have to throw it away in Thailand.”

  The comments from the junta leader have raised hopes of a policy revival regarding waste after years of short-term planning — abetted by short-lived governments — in the politically turbulent kingdom.

  Fearing that landfills are incubating massive health issues down the line, the Pollution Control Department wants to see collection rates raised locally and laws tightened to encourage recycling.

  One solution would be better facilities to compost organic waste — especially in places such as Thailand where nearly half of the daily 1.1 kg of household waste produced per person is biodegradable.

  As they heave a wheelbarrow full of rotting food and broken beer bottles into the back of a garbage truck, a group of Bangkok garbage collecters say that Thais must change their habits or live with the consequences.

  “It is hard to solve the problem,” said Wutthichai Namuangrak, seemingly inured to the sickly sweet stench rising from the back of the truck. “We can help by collecting the trash, but people cannot just rely on us.”
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