Reader question: Why do people use so many plastic bags in Thailand?

Efforts are being made to reduce it.
But since almost everything is done in small bags at the Bigc, for example, you just have a huge amount.
Boxes are not used.
Recently I bought a batch of 5 kg rice bags which we use at the market.
Can they reuse.
Waste is a big problem. Recycling of, among other things, plastic bottles and paper is done.
There is still hope.

Yes indeed very simple... do what I do, just refuse that plastic bag / bag and just take it with you either in your hand or in a shopping bag and immediately set an example to the fellow shoppers. Couldn't be simpler, right? Try it but at least it gives me / you a good feeling.

If, like me, you are against the excessive use of plastic bags, you will have to turn to the government.
All Thais consider plastic use perfectly normal and will not understand our objections. That is why an “education”, as has also taken place in the Netherlands, must come from above.

I also think it's a great problem, I sort everything myself and bring it to the dealer near where I live. And give it away for free, I don't need money for it in the beginning I gave it to a collector who came by but he only took the bags with empty bottles because they brought in money.
But I also see so little information on Thai TV to solve this problem.
But I think if we could buy food on every corner of the street in Holland and there was a small shop every 50 meters, we would have the same problem.

It is estimated that 540 000 000 plastic bags are given away every day when purchasing products.
If you put them in a row, you can go around the earth 4 times.

Temperature: 40 degrees celcius, I buy a packaged (Magnum) ice cream in the 7-11.
It should be in a plastic bag.

What does such a girl think? Surely this gentleman wants to take that ice cream home first?

Normally I throw a sturdy, cotton bag around the speedometer of the motorbike. It doesn't bother me at all and it often happens that I buy something on the way even though I didn't think about it before I left.

From my mouth only one answer to the question: stupid.

I have noticed that many of the plastic bags decompose over time, already within 2 years.
My wife mainly puts clothes in plastic bags and that is then placed in boxes.
And from time to time such a box is unpacked again to see what's inside, what is then noticeable is that the plastic bags literally fall apart. This process goes even faster if they are outside under a shelter and when the sun gets a hold on it, it will be digested within a year.
Now this is not the case with all plastic bags, eg those used to put food in.
Which should certainly be forbidden to use those tempex trays that do not digest. Certainly it is useful to put hot meals in, you do not burn your hands when you eat out of it, but it does not outweigh the eternal life of it, moreover, chemicals are released. it takes years for the plastic to crumble and then disappear into fish, which we will be served later, and other sea creatures, I also happened to see that program with that huge amount of plastic waste in the sea.
I think you can become very rich here in Thailand by recycling, but then you have to do it big. Here people often do not get further than picking it up (and then you are lucky if they come to your region) and then it eventually disappears on an open field and the mountain only gets bigger with all the stench nuisance that entails.
I live in the countryside and every night the rubbish is burned by the neighbors in the early evening, you expect to find healthy air in the countryside but it gets ruined by all those little smoky fires around you. And everything goes on, including those plastic bags.
Now it was / has not gone smoothly in the Netherlands either. We were given the wheelie bins to split up the household waste ourselves and, as it turned out, the contents simply went to the incinerators, nothing to recycle, just common misinformation. Hopefully that has improved today.
I talk of Rotterdam 10 years ago.