While researching my plastic bags post I came across an article in the Nation, which indicated that plastic bags could be donated to the Thai Craft Association to be turned into handbags. I followed up and confirmed that the Association does indeed accept donations of clean plastic shopping bags. The bags are passed on to a group of artisans who knit them into handbags - each handbag is made up of 50 recycled plastic bags.
The Where & When Bags can be dropped of at the entrance of any Thai Craft Fair or at the Thai Craft Office.
Craft Fairs are generally held once a month at the Ambassador Hotel, Sukhumvit Soi 11 (near BTS stop Nana) on the 3rd floor of the Tower Wing from 10AM to 2PM. A fair schedule is available on Thai Craft Website. The finished handbags can also be purchased at these fairs.
The Thai Craft Office is located at 242 Soi Akharn Songkroh, Akharn Songkroh Sai 15 Road near BTS stop Chong Nonsi. Bags can be dropped off any weekday between 8:30AM and 6:00PM.
View Larger Map
Fair Trade As if selling some truly beautiful Thai crafts and providing a place to recycle your plastic bags weren't reasons enough to attend a craft fair, The Thai Craft Association is a Fair Trade organization and a member of the International Fair Trade Association (IFAT) and the Asia Fair Trade Forum (AFTF). As a fair trade organization, the Association works with disadvantaged artisans throughout Thailand to provide them with access to the market and a fair price for their crafts. Other guiding principals of the Associations work are concern for people and the environment, and transparency for both artisans and customers.
Volunteer Want to help out? The Association relies on volunteers for much of its good work - professionals with special skills to share, as well as anyone with enthusiasm. Sign up to volunteer on the website.
So start saving up those plastic bags and I'll see you at the next craft fair - April 26th!
Showing posts with label plastic bags. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plastic bags. Show all posts
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Plastic Bags
During my first few weeks here, plastic bags began to take over my life. No matter what my daily activity I always seemed to accumulate at least one or two plastic bags. I had assigned them to a small corner of one drawer in my kitchen to store for re-use as bin bags. They were sharing the drawer with my glass measuring cups, cheese grater, and kitchen towels (I know, it's a strange drawer). In less than a week they completely took over the drawer. I still can't see my cheese grater, though I know it is back there somewhere, waiting for its Bangkok debut.
Every time I opened the drawer I was racked with guilt. I would imagine the bag suffocating some sea turtle, clogging street drains during the rainy season, or outliving me in some landfill. The worst part being, that the bag wasn't even of much utility to me in the first place. Take for example this cup of coffee I bought. In this case the bag was actually a hindrance to me. I beg you, if you have been given something more ridiculous in a plastic bag, please send the me the photo. I might start an album.
It was shortly after I received this cup of coffee that I put my proverbial foot down. No more plastic bags.
How to avoid getting them. Step one was learning how to say that I don't want one in Thai. These two phrases have served me well.
I brought my bags with me from the US and take one with me everywhere I go - discreetly folded in the bottom of my purse. Now that I'm paying attention though, I see that reusable bags are for sale literally everywhere in Bangkok. I've seen them at Chatuchak, the Jim Thompson store, Siam Center, and at my neighborhood street market.
Why care? For one thing, they are an eyesore. Plastic bags litter both the sidewalks and the waterways in my neighborhood. And since the bags can take as many as 1,000 years to break down, they are going to be there for a while. 1,000 years seems like a really long time when I consider that I probably only used the bag for 5 to 60 minutes - 1 week if I reused it as a bin liner. If you consider the resources that go into creating and distributing plastic bags - both the energy used and the pollution created - the picture gets bleaker still.
In September of 2007, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) began a campaign to promote the use of cloth bags. According to their studies 21% of the garbage in Bangkok is made up of plastic bags (other estimates put the figure at 15%)!! The BMA said that by cutting plastic bag consumption, greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by up to 1 million tons/year and garbage collection costs could be reduced by 650 million baht/year.
What to do if you do get them. Despite all of my best intentions, it does occasionally happen that a bag sneaks up on me. So what then?
At the very very least, I try to reuse them. In our home plastic shopping bags usually make encore appearances as bin liners and leftover containers. We also use them when we travel to wrap up our shoes before packing them with clean clothes. I've also used them as packing material. Still when I'm completely done with the bag... it ends up in the bin. My apartment building doesn't have recycling bins but my apartment manager assures me that the recyclables are separated. According to most of the literature I've read, he's right.
In Bangkok, and throughout Southeast Asia, recyclables are recovered by both official garbage collectors and so called "pickers" - individuals who pick out and sell recyclables for income. Sounds great right? Chuck everything into one bin and let someone else make a living out of sorting it out. Unfortunately there are some drawbacks. "Pickers" - many of whom are children - are exposing themselves to health risks by working in unsanitary conditions. And because recycling is market-driven rather than mandatory, not everything that could be recycled is getting recycled.
Want to be sure your bags get recycled? You could take them to a recycler yourself. In January BK Magazine's Mr. Know-It-All provided a list of places to drop of recyclables.
Unfortunately recycling the plastic bags also consumes energy and produces waste so the much better solution is to avoid getting those bags in the first place.
Sources:
Every time I opened the drawer I was racked with guilt. I would imagine the bag suffocating some sea turtle, clogging street drains during the rainy season, or outliving me in some landfill. The worst part being, that the bag wasn't even of much utility to me in the first place. Take for example this cup of coffee I bought. In this case the bag was actually a hindrance to me. I beg you, if you have been given something more ridiculous in a plastic bag, please send the me the photo. I might start an album.It was shortly after I received this cup of coffee that I put my proverbial foot down. No more plastic bags.
How to avoid getting them. Step one was learning how to say that I don't want one in Thai. These two phrases have served me well.
-
mâi ow tŭng / (I) don't want bag
-
mee tŭng láa-ow / (I) have bag already
I brought my bags with me from the US and take one with me everywhere I go - discreetly folded in the bottom of my purse. Now that I'm paying attention though, I see that reusable bags are for sale literally everywhere in Bangkok. I've seen them at Chatuchak, the Jim Thompson store, Siam Center, and at my neighborhood street market.
Why care? For one thing, they are an eyesore. Plastic bags litter both the sidewalks and the waterways in my neighborhood. And since the bags can take as many as 1,000 years to break down, they are going to be there for a while. 1,000 years seems like a really long time when I consider that I probably only used the bag for 5 to 60 minutes - 1 week if I reused it as a bin liner. If you consider the resources that go into creating and distributing plastic bags - both the energy used and the pollution created - the picture gets bleaker still.
In September of 2007, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) began a campaign to promote the use of cloth bags. According to their studies 21% of the garbage in Bangkok is made up of plastic bags (other estimates put the figure at 15%)!! The BMA said that by cutting plastic bag consumption, greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by up to 1 million tons/year and garbage collection costs could be reduced by 650 million baht/year.
What to do if you do get them. Despite all of my best intentions, it does occasionally happen that a bag sneaks up on me. So what then?
At the very very least, I try to reuse them. In our home plastic shopping bags usually make encore appearances as bin liners and leftover containers. We also use them when we travel to wrap up our shoes before packing them with clean clothes. I've also used them as packing material. Still when I'm completely done with the bag... it ends up in the bin. My apartment building doesn't have recycling bins but my apartment manager assures me that the recyclables are separated. According to most of the literature I've read, he's right.
In Bangkok, and throughout Southeast Asia, recyclables are recovered by both official garbage collectors and so called "pickers" - individuals who pick out and sell recyclables for income. Sounds great right? Chuck everything into one bin and let someone else make a living out of sorting it out. Unfortunately there are some drawbacks. "Pickers" - many of whom are children - are exposing themselves to health risks by working in unsanitary conditions. And because recycling is market-driven rather than mandatory, not everything that could be recycled is getting recycled.
Want to be sure your bags get recycled? You could take them to a recycler yourself. In January BK Magazine's Mr. Know-It-All provided a list of places to drop of recyclables.
Unfortunately recycling the plastic bags also consumes energy and produces waste so the much better solution is to avoid getting those bags in the first place.
Sources:
- Thailand Joins World Community in Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Thai Government Public Relations Department (Sep. 3, 2007).
- Plastic Shopping Bags in Australia, National Plastic Bags Working Group Report to the National Packaging Covenant Council (Dec. 6, 2002).
- State of Waste Management in South East Asia, United Nations Environment Programme (2004).
- 3R Practice in East and South-East Asia, Waste Management World (Sep. 2007).
- Waste Reduction, Reuse and Recycling, Thailand Environment Monitor (2003).
- The Curse of Plastic Bags, Bangkok Post (Feb. 26, 2008).
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