From advertising to waste
The way in which waste is dealt with in Thailand certainly does not deserve a beauty prize in 'our' eyes. The article about the polluted beach in Pattaya and the reactions to it on June 19 speak volumes. Comparing with the Netherlands is something that is rightly not always allowed by the moderators on this blog – after all, it is about Thailand – but we secretly do that in our assessment of the situation, of course.
Then Thailand will of course lose out in many areas of the Netherlands, but we should not be surprised about that. It is fairer to compare with the surrounding countries, and if you do, Thailand is often the winner.
I myself often try to estimate how many years Thailand is 'behind' the Netherlands with regard to a certain subject.
The waste problem and pollution mentioned above made me think back to my primary school days, in the early XNUMXs.
My parents had just replaced the coal stove with a gas-fired fireplace with radiators. A marvel of technical innovation and made possible in part thanks to a twist of nature at Slochteren. The coal scuttle could go, the coal shed got a new destination, and I left a warm bedroom for the classroom in the morning.
The windows of that classroom sometimes had to remain closed, as the garbage dump was located on the other side of the nearby Rhine-Schie Canal. The intention was to have it grown over after the incinerator was completed, so that a beautiful park on a slightly undulating terrain would arise. From time to time, however, unintentionally (?), the fire went into this rubbish dump and with the right wind direction our school would lie in smoke for hours. It was just like that.
There was a slope along the canal over a length of several hundred metres. A wooden sign had been placed by the province about in the middle: Dumping of rubbish prohibited. This sign exerted an enormous attraction on people who were renovating or otherwise did not know what to do with their mess. Every evening, private individuals and undeclared workers drove back and forth there to get rid of their surpluses. When the mountain of rubbish had become so large that it threatened to rise above the ground level of the adjacent road, the sign was moved about a hundred meters. By whom no one knows.
At school we were made environmentally aware, once a year, with the pupils of the highest classes being equipped with prods to rid the school grounds of the necessary empty packs of rolling tobacco, half-decayed chip trays and used contraceptives. The beach of Pattaya was nothing, but once a year was really enough.
The public transport buses emitted a suffocating cloud of soot particles as they drove off at every stop, my father exchanged his DKW 3=6 (two-stroke) for a Panhard 24BT, and later for a Fiat 125 that ran 1 in 7 and after six year to a scrap heap to rot further away. He could change the oil himself, the oil literally disappeared down the well. For his birthday he got an electric paint sprayer, Hfl. 79.95 from the V&D, and every weekend he found something to give a different color in the backyard, simply in the open air and entirely in accordance with the method of the happy daddy on the festive packaging.
The signs 'Don't leave as a thank you…' indicated rather what was left behind in the parks and public gardens than what was being cleaned up.
In short, the Netherlands had barely outgrown the denial phase with regard to environmental pollution and it would be decades before the last coal-fired power station was commissioned…
With the necessary blows you can say that Thailand is about fifty years behind in this area. There is still a lot to be gained here, but don't expect miracles or sudden changes. The solution does not lie in one place either, it will have to be a combination of education, awareness, regulation, enforcement, infrastructure, money and much more.
And even though I sometimes wear rose-colored glasses, I also see things through them in Thailand that indicate a mentality that is difficult to change and a bit of misunderstanding, or unwillingness.
I therefore conclude with an example of this, which I have a view from my favorite pub. It is a Tuk-Tuk in once fresh colors that was placed here some time ago as an advertising object by the manager of a hotel. A Tuk-Tuk in Pattaya, you are surprised, so the idea was nice. And then rooms from 399 Baht, what more could a person need. Nothing, except that you can't leave such a thing to its fate, of course. Something like that requires some maintenance, and that's a nasty word.
The once most charming Tuk-Tukje is now seriously neglected, the tires are flat, garbage bags are hung on it, and it has also become a storage or waste place for the market stall holders in the area.
The advertising effect has now been completely lost. If you see this, it is not an invitation to take a look at that hotel, but rather a warning to avoid it with a wide berth. Or would they keep the rooms spic and span? If only you could make such a person understand that….
Yes Frans, a nice piece and you are right. People are not that different and a lot of it has to do with economic conditions. In the short term, the mentality should change and good examples should be evident from politically made decisions. There is still a lot of need for change in many countries, including Thailand, before the environment receives the positive attention it desperately needs.
In the Isaan people can always end up with their rubbish at a landfill with an unclear status (legal or illegal)
The owners of the adjacent rice fields have to accept the stench and the blowing plastic. Family once owned a beachfront restaurant in southern Thailand. Sometimes I helped clean up after a stiff breeze. Unimaginable! Ranging from toothbrushes to the giant lamps of Pla muhk fishermen! Fluorescent tubes etc. but mostly plastic! Where did you go with it? Burn it! A black smoke of burning plastic and Styrofoam was the result. There was no pick-up service. Or we dug a deep hole in the sand and everything went in there.
Frans, a good and truthful story. I also remember bad environmental things from my youth. A small river, the Almelose AA, ran through my home town of Almelo, on which a tannery discharged its waste water for years. It was a smelly and foamy drain, which didn't get clean until the XNUMXs. because the factory closed.
On the south side of Almelo there is another water, the Weezebeek, also a sewer, from which you can now safely drink the water.
I sometimes get annoyed by the rubbish dumps here, but as I have stated several times, it is a Thai problem that they will have to solve themselves. You can start raising them on a small scale, in my street no one dares to throw an empty pack of cigarettes or something like that on the floor anymore, because I pick it up and put it in their mailbox.
When I look through my rose colored glasses, I see that the village where I live can be called CLEAN.
I rarely come across rubbish on the street.
Garbage is collected once a week.
But when I take those glasses off, I don't know where that dirt goes when it's picked up.
My guess is that this still ends up in a local landfill.
At least until not so long ago.
But I see real garbage trucks driving these days, instead of open trucks, so maybe there's hope.
In the 70s, the Rhine was the drain of industry in France and Germany.
All chemical junk was discharged into it.
In particular, the waste from the French potash mines.
in Nongkhai the rubbish is collected every morning 7 days a week.
every Mooren is also started at 0300 to sweep all the streets clean, come and try that in the Netherlands.
that is why it is also a fact that despite the stray dogs on the street you do not see excrement etc anywhere
greetings from a spotless Nongkhai
I was in Japan a few weeks ago
No graffiti, no rubbish bins and yet no rubbish on the streets. The Japanese are expected to clean up their own mess and that's what they do. We "the rich West" can learn something from that. So let's first look at ourselves.
The Japanese have always been clean up freaks throughout the ages. Even their work clothes must look spotless and if a stain appears during work, the Japanese will become distraught. Is in the genes.
We then live in the province of Chanthaburi, place tha Mai. Here the blue and yellow barrels are emptied every day, they are about 100 to 150 meters apart. Blue is public, yellow is private. Now there are hundreds of “school” vans, from Toyota Vans to built-up Pick-Ups. After school, drive behind any van and the styrofoam trays, plastic cups and so on, it flies left and right from the means of transport. And how do the children get these remains, it is sold next to the school.
I used to live near Tiel, a Mack Donald wanted to settle there: only if the rubbish in a circle of 5 km was cleaned up every day, why not also make such a claim to these uncontrolled sellers. by the way their food is also not controlled, the health of the children live!
Why not? Because it is of course insane to hold one or a few food-selling entrepreneurs liable for the complete pollution of an area with a radius of five kilometers. Can only cross the mind of Dutch drivers who have an antipathy to hamburgers.
And as for the lack of control of food sales: My story is precisely that you have to see such rules in the spirit of the times and the level of development of Thailand and that it is not realistic to expect that suddenly there will be food authorities on every corner of the street. will show up to check logs and wave thermometers around.
It is indeed comparable to Europe 50 years ago. By the way, does anyone know what to do with frying oil here? I asked the Thai, but they say grwoon : dig a well.
I don't immediately find the solution, but I can't drink it either
No. It is collected, passed through a sieve and reused at the market stalls. At my condominium, the cleaning staff does as well. And otherwise in the sewer. That is why they are often hidden. But yes, little is done about environmental education here. Furthermore, it is always the same with the Thai: I have lost the problem so ……
No idea whether vegetable oil is really harmful. I can't get any further from Google than that it can lead to blockages, that recycling is better for the environment, and that recycling places less burden on the environment, that you can do your bit this way and that it is important because it counts towards the environmental campaign'. But will it really make any difference?
Here in Nongkhai they are doing very well.
A number of years ago, a large part of Nongkhai was always flooded during the rainy season, with all the unsanitary conditions that entailed. Now a network of pipes with a diameter of 1 meter 50 and pumps on the Mekong River has been constructed throughout Nongkhai.
The quay has also been raised a few meters with a beautiful cycle path along the Mekong River, so that Nongkhai no longer has any flooding and can be a textbook example for the great Bangkok.
also every morning at 0400 to 0600 the streets in Nongkhai are swept by thai sweeping teams, so there is no dirt to be seen in the morning.
And every morning in the streets of Nongkhai, garbage is collected by a reasonably modern garbage truck, which in my opinion makes Nongkhai one of the cleanest cities in Thailand, where even Dutch municipalities can make a point.
And then we haven't even mentioned the fantastic infrastructure compared to 10 years ago
with wide 3 to 6 lane roads and large shopping malls, Tesco Lotus, MegaHome, Makro etc etc and everything spotlessly clean and currently no traffic jams due to the increasingly better infrastructure.
A beautiful clean city with exceptionally good government that has transformed Nongkhai from a farming village into a modern, clean and pleasant city.
I come from the Dutch countryside and we had a garbage hole in the yard until the late 70s. Occasionally some gas oil over it and the fire in it. This is how you prevented a rat infestation. After a year or two, a crane arrived and dug a new hole. Then the people in the outlying area were allowed to take the garbage to a central place in the village. In the 2s, the municipality noticed the revenue side of the story and they came to collect it properly. So what Frans rightly points out, we in the Netherlands have changed not so long ago. So who knows, Thailand will get it done faster. I was once allowed to ride with the beach cleaning service in Scheveningen who clean the beach with beach cleaning machines at night. Well, they also collect a lot of what is 'forgotten' by the bathers. If they don't work at night you also get pictures like yesterday's over Pattaya beach.
When we cycle in the vicinity of changmai we also come across all kinds of things. Sometimes I think a hotel or something has been renovated because then there are a do not know how many toilet pots and broken tiles. There are still a few animals in between. 1 person throws junk down, the other thinks oh then mine can also be added. But also in the Netherlands people throw everything on the street, even if the waste bin is 3 steps away from them. It also affects the mentality of the people to make.
next door to us lives a family whose mother cleans up the stuff thrown down by the grandchildren every morning, neat and sweet old woman, the only drawback is that Grandma comes out with a lighter and lights the whole mess, plastic bags, packaging and so on who am I to give an old Isan woman education in hygiene and the environment, she is 75 so I think she no longer picks up on that know-it-all farang, we use garbage bags ourselves and take them to the public road when they are full where there are yellow barrels, but yes those black bags cost money and the Thais think that is a shame, but we think we are far ahead of the times, I used to refresh my car above the vortex in The Hague, and you didn't think about that either ,and we cannot educate these people, at least not all of them, as long as they keep the inner tubes to light the BBQ there is still a lot to teach.