In the heart of Siem Reap, Cambodia, lies a remarkable institution that is not only changing lives but also reshaping the future of its students. The Sala Bai Hotel School Cambodia is a shining example of education, empowerment, and hope. Incredible work is being done by Sala Bai to provide disadvantaged Cambodian youth with the skills and opportunities they need to build a brighter future.
Siem Reap is known around the world for its stunning temples, including the iconic Angkor Wat. However, behind the tourism facade, there lies a complex issue: poverty and lack of education. Sala Bai emerged as a response to these challenges, aiming to break the cycle of poverty by offering free hospitality and catering training to young people from underprivileged backgrounds.
What sets Sala Bai apart is its holistic approach to education. Beyond offering vocational training in fields like cooking, hospitality, wellness, and front office operations, the school also provides essential life skills such as English language proficiency, financial literacy, and personal development. This well-rounded education equips students with the tools they need not only to secure jobs but also to thrive in their personal lives.
Sala Bai’s success can be attributed to its dedicated staff, passionate volunteers, and the support of generous donors and partners from around the world. Together, they are creating a brighter future for Cambodia by investing in the education and empowerment of its youth.
Sala Bai’s restaurant, hotel, and spa are open to the public. Guests and visitors can have lunch in the restaurant, stay overnight in the hotel, or enjoy a relaxing spa treatment. This initiative not only provides a unique and immersive experience of Cambodia but also contributes directly to financing a part of the student’s training.
By booking a room, enjoying a meal, or indulging in a spa treatment at Sala Bai, you become a part of their mission to empower Cambodian youth through education and training. Your visit not only provides financial support but also offers you a unique opportunity to interact with and support the students on their journey to a brighter future.
When you visit Sala Bai, you’re not just a guest; you’re a part of something transformative.
Created in 2002 by the French NGO Agir Pour Le Cambodge, Sala Baï is a free vocational training hospitality school based in Siem Reap.The Sala Bai program was set up to provide life chances to the most disadvantaged who have little chance to get out of the cycle of poverty due to the following reasons:
Very low school attendance rate in a country where 60% of the population is under 20.
Girls drop out of school at a younger than boys to help at home, work or get married.
the number of hotels in Siem Reap, town of the Angkor temples is increasing very fast and requires a more and more qualified workforce.
What do they do?
They aim to reduce poverty in Cambodia through social and professional insertion of young under-privileged Cambodians.
Every year, the school trains 100 young disadvantaged Cambodians in one of the four main professions of the hospitality industry: restaurant waiter/waitress, cook, receptionist & housekeeping attendants. Priority is given to girls (70%), due to the fact that they are more vulnerable and have less training opportunities.
To date, Sala Bai has trained more than 900 young people. They have all found a job within their first year of training. Thanks to these young trainees and the direct impact on their families, more than 5,500 people have benefited from Sala Baï.
They provide working skills, development & capacity to build local teams for a future autonomy of the program, while contributing to the development of responsible tourism and of vocational training in Cambodia.
How can you help?
Have lunch at the restaurant or stay at the hotel:
US$ 10 One lunch = approximately 1 training-day cost per student.
US$ 20 One night = approximately 2 training-day cost per student.
US$ 35 One night in the suite = approximately 4 training-day cost per student.
Buy a cook book (Cambodian Cooking, English version) – also available in French ” La cuisine du Cambodge avec les apprentis de Sala Baï”
US$ 24 French version = approximately 3 training-day cost per student.
US$ 33 English version = approximately 4 training-day cost per student.
Your donation directly benefits their needs:
US$ 10 1 day for 1 student.
US$ 260 1 month for 1 student.
US$ 3 120 1 year for 1 student.
EXO Foundation support
Sala Bai is one of our favorite organisations to work with as it genuinely contributes to break the poverty cycle of the poorest youth, carefully selected (annual salary below 300$) through house visits and family interviews. EXO foundation supports Sala Bai by promoting it as responsible operation to be sold to travelers, with EXO Travel bringing over 500 clients a year to their restaurant.
6th October 23. Our colleagues from EXO Cambodia have organized in Siem Reap an amazing and successful event for Tuk Tuk drivers. A workshop to spread awareness about sustainability, child protections and waste management in cooperation with two excellent organizations Child Save and Waste Management by GAEA. Our colleagues have also briefed them about sustainability topics and prepared a nice event including breakfast and some nice gifts as vouchers meal from Sala Bai, an hotel school with whom we also cooperated. 55 tuk drivers attended the event very happy with the time invested.
Our amazing colleagues at EXO Cambodia hosted a remarkable event in Siem Reap. They organized a workshop for Tuk Tuk drivers, spreading awareness about sustainability, child protection, and waste management. They even teamed up with incredible organizations like Childsafe and Waste Management by GAEA. 🚲🌏 Our colleagues also shared insights on sustainability, best practices, and other tips as tricks on how to deal with foreign customers. To top it off, treated the drivers with some fantastic gifts, including meal vouchers from Sala Bai, Spoons and Haven– some fantastic hospitality projects we’ve partnered with. And special thanks to Lotus Blanc hotel that sponsored the room and coffee break Kudos to EXO Cambodia! 🙌
130A, Street 430, Phnom Penh. / Tel.: (+855) (0) 77851800. Monday to Friday: 7:30am to 6 pm. Saturday: 9am to 6 pm. Sunday: 12pm to 5pm.
Freshly made coffee, mouthwatering bakery products and tasty meals are all on the menu at this charming café and restaurant located in the Russian Market neighbourhood. The business is operated by Daughters of Cambodia, an organisation that supports victims of sex-trafficking and sex-exploitation, trains them in cooking and hospitality skills and equips them for employment in the city’s high-end hotels.
44, Street 310, BKK1 Phnom Penh. Tel.: (+855) (0) 10333014. Every day: 7 am to 2 pm. Thursday to Saturday: 5 pm to 9 pm (upon reservation)
Choose your favourite dishes from a tempting Asian and International lunch buffet, enjoy a delicious hotpot & grill buffet for dinner or drop by for a hearty Cambodian or Western breakfast. This social enterprise provides life-changing employment opportunities for men and women from Hagar NGO’s shelters and social programs – and exceptional catering and customer services in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville.
74, St. 174, Phnom Penh. Tel.(+855) (0) 92 219 565.
Set in a lovely colonial building with an atmospheric garden, serving delicious Khmer dishes. This restaurant is giving back to young disadvantaged people, dine for a good cause!
215, St. 13, near National Museum, Phnom Penh. Tel. (+855) (0) 12 802 072
Famous for its tasty Asian and Western food and served tapas-style. This restaurant is managed by Friends International an NGO protecting children against sexual exploitation and abuse, with a wide range of vocational / entrepreneurship programs.
Sala Baï is not just an excellent restaurant, serving high quality Western and Khmer dishes, but also one of Cambodia’s most impressive social projects, which trains young Cambodians from the poorest family backgrounds for a future in the hospitality industry. Diners have the opportunity to chat with the trainees who are turning their lives around by acquiring professional cooking and customer service skills
Sok San Street, Siem Reap, 20m past the X-Bar, on the right
Located in the heart of Siem Reap, but away from the hustle and bustle of its main centre, Haven is the perfect place to relax and indulge, and at the same time support young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds. This quality training restaurant equips them with the skills they need to achieve a secure, independent future.
8A, B Phum Slokram, Siem Reap (between Wat Polanka and Catholic church) Tel. (+855) (0) 17 363 284
Vocational training restaurant set up by Friends International, a must-try in Siem Reap and fantastic dining experience with both local and international food.
Street 2, Battambang. Tel.: (+855) (0) 97 398 7815. Tuesday to Sunday: 11 am to 10:30 pm
This colourful restaurant and café, a social enterprise belonging to the Cambodian Children’s Trust (CCTV), serves simple, tasty, wholesome dishes made from seasonal organic products that are sourced from its own garden, local farmers and neighbouring markets. At Jaan Bai, CCT provides training opportunities that empower underprivileged children and young people for work in the hospitality sector.
Street 1 ½, Battambang. Next to the Central Market
Kinyei Café is the place to go in Battambang for expertly made espresso coffee and delicious bakery goods. Located on the lower floor of a beautiful French colonial building, this training café was created by Kinyei NGO to provide hands-on experience for vulnerable local youths, and at the same time offer an open space for social innovation, cross cultural engagement and local artistic talent.
This welcoming café it’s not just the coffee and cakes that are Epic. The venue is also a shop/showroom for a range of colourful giftware that includes t-shirts, silk scarves, handbags and jewellery, made from natural materials. All of the products here are crafted and cooked with love by deaf and disabled people, who are able to earn a living thanks to Epic Arts and its customers.
Downtown, behind Samudera Supermarket, Sihanoukville. Open from 7am – 6pm everyday –
The Starfish Bakery & Café was started in 2001 as an income generating project for the Starfish Project. The Starfish Center provides employment opportunities for Cambodian people with disabilities as all outreach workers, bakery/café, internet and massage employees suffer from some form of physical disability which makes it difficult for them to obtain meaningful employment elsewhere. In the Starfish Center visitors can enjoy healthy lunches, delicious pastry and cakes, massage or use our high speed internet.
Their menu is Vegan and based on Macrobiotic principles. Their food is organic wherever possible. The vegetables are from certified organic farms and they support small producers to source their ingredients.
A unique model worldwide based on the principle of self-sufficiency, this social restaurant The Fair Warung Balé prides itself in giving back 100% of its profits to the foundation and its Free Health and Medical Care programs. It is already quite popular, better to book before!
Moksa is an excellent dining option in Ubud, it is not only a restaurant but a destination created as a concept of ‘A Space of Awakening The Senses’. The concept stands as communal place with additional supporting features such as the culinary academy, permaculture gardens, a dojo space for yoga, meditation, martial arts, special events, and weekly community farmers market.
This restaurant offers delicious local food in an authentic yet simple setting. This restaurant is managed by Friends International an NGO empowering young disadvantaged children and aiming to break the cycle of poverty through entrepreneurship.
100 Sisavang Vatana Road, Ban Wat Nong, between the French Institute and the Mekong River. Open Monday to Saturday 11am – 9:30pm – T +856 30 515 5221/71 254 135
Khaiphen is named after a popular Laotian snack made of crispy Mekong River weed unique to Luang Prabang. Enjoy creative Lao cuisine, as well as great shakes and cocktails, set in a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage city. The restaurant also has a small gift shop attached to it, selling products made by families which will help keep their children in education.
Tamarind: a taste of Laos Kingkithsalath Road, next to The Apsara Laos Hotel, Luang Prabang. Tel. (+856 71) 213 128 / 20 7777 0484
This stylish Lao-Australian-family restaurant and cooking school is the perfect setting to sample and learn more about the special flavours and ingredients of Lao cuisine. Create your own dishes in the buffet; choose from the restaurant’s a la carte menu of Lao specialities, or attend its guided food tastings and other culinary events. Committed to giving something back to local communities, Tamarind sources all its raw matters from local producers and suppliers. Diners can take a taste of Tamarind home for themselves or their friends: the restaurant offers a range of gourmet gifts, cookbooks and cooking utensils.
Saffron café is committed to producing the highest quality Arabica in Northern Laos. Their coffee is organic, shade-grown coffee is grown, hand-picked, processed, and hand-sorted. As a social or ‘profit-for-purpose’ business, Saffron Coffee profits are reinvested for the benefit of Lao people by helping every individual farming family produce more quality beans and providing access to a growing market for their beans.
141, 1st floor, Seikkantha street, Yangon. Tel. (+951) 09 45 193 3034. Monday to Sunday, 11 am to 10 pm
Appealingly located in a quiet corner of crowded downtown Yangon, LinkAge restaurant is the social enterprise belonging to the NGO, Forever Humanitarian and Development Projects, that provides vocational training to street children in Yangon. Diners can enjoy delicious food, prepared and served by enthusiastic young people and at the same time admire the collection of Myanmar Fine Art paintings that decorate the walls.
Malikha Road, Yangon (close to crossroads with Parami Road). Tel (+951)1661983
This hotel and restaurant equips underprivileged young Myanmar nationals with the culinary and service skills that change their lives. Mouthwatering set menus, both Burmese and Western, are served for lunch and dinner.
Zwekabin Street (between Ingone Street & Kan Thar Yar Lake), Hpa An, Karen State – Open Monday to Saturday, 11am – 8pm – Tel +95 925 5953 135.
A community centre inviting youths to gain priceless work experience in the hospitality sector in a relaxed café environment. The centre’s programs offer participants the opportunity to learn more about Karen culture and education. A wide range of drinks (hot beverages, juices, shakes, smoothies) and food (snacks, salads and Burmese meals) are available.
Pyu Saw Hti Street (next to Nyaung U Thante Hotel), Bagan. Tel: +959451951950
The Sanon Training Restaurant is operated by the Myanmar Youth Development Institute, a non profit organization. It trains disadvantaged youth in hospitality and English and serves delicious international and local food. You can stop by for a drink or more and order their daily’s specials!
6 Sukhumvit Soi 12, Sukhumvit Road, Klong Toey, Bangkok (Close to Times Square Building; 200m south from the intersection of Sukhumvit Rd. with Sukhumvit 12 Alley)
This excellent restaurant serves an extensive selection of tasty Thai and Western dishes; soups, appetizers, salads, noodles and vegetarian food. Their gift shop offers a wide choice of handmade ceramics, candles, Thai-silk products, t-shirts and a novel range of items made from condoms, all crafted by villagers from rural areas of Thailand. Both projects provide operational and financial support to the Population and Community Development Association, which has been effectively promoting the use of condoms since the 90’s, when Thailand had the world’s fastest growing numbers of HIV cases.
620/25 Thanalai Rd., Muang, Chiang Rai 57000, Thailand
Cabbages and condoms restaurants has expanded its concept to Chiag Mai and is serving the same menu in the North of Thailand while supporting its community development projects.
Proudly run by a Chiang Mai family, this charming, eco-friendly restaurant serves traditional, home-cooked recipes from Northern Thailand, made with organic and locally-sourced ingredients. It promotes and celebrates Chiang Mai culture; every detail – from interior design to staff uniform – is locally designed and made in the Lanna style.
Krua Pak Waan 13000 1/6 ซ.อู่ทอง 4 Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya
This restaurant focuses on the flavors of traditional Thai-Muslim dishes. They grow their own organic vegetables and their specialty is Pak Waan which is used in most dishes. The river prawns are amazing.
507 Moo 10, Maepa, Mae Sot, Tak 63110 (Opening Times: Thursday to Sunday for Dinners only)
The Passport is definitely worth a dinner trip to the north side of Mae Sot. This non-profit hospitality vocational training school offers Western/Asian menus, showcasing the skills of migrant and refugee students. The vocational training center was launched in 2009 by IECD and the Tak Border Child Assistance Foundation.
This welcoming restaurant is as committed to environmental and social welfare as it is to serving an excellent selection of tasty seafood and healthy cuisine – check out the special low-carbon footprint menu! All staffs are local and trained in environmental conservation, hospitality and health issues.
3/5 Hoang Sa Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City – Tel: (+84) (0)8 39 10 12 77
Housed in a beautifully restored French colonial villa down a dimly lit alley, this charming restaurant serves healthy authentic Vietnamese delicacies and street foods made with fresh, quality ingredients with a touch of French influence. Bloom’s service offers a charming, comfortable, romantic atmosphere. This restaurant is also a vocational training center for disadvantaged youth. Capacity: 100 persons
180D, Lane 178, Hai Ba Trung street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City
At Noir, it is more than just a meal it is a sensory journey, you will experience a dinner in a complete darkness where you will be guided and served by blind or visually impaired staff who have been specially trained to assist and reassure guests. This dining experience will stimulate your senses and open your mind, to a symphony of flavor from Asian to European cuisine. A unique occasion to support organizations restoring sight to visually impaired children. Capacity: 70 persons
Alley 35 Đặng Thai Mai, Quảng An, Tây Hồ, Hà Nội 10000
Dine for a cause at the stylish KOTO Restaurant. KOTO, or ‘Know One Teach One’, is an NGO dedicated to creating a brighter future for street kids and other disadvantaged youths in Vietnam. Young people in the KOTO training program are taught English language, hospitality and life skills and gain valuable work experience at its first rate restaurant.
The Silent Tea House is a Reaching Out project run by hearing impaired staff. Enjoy a cup of freshly prepared tea and choose from a selection of tasty, organic, home-made cakes and snacks while you appreciate the beautiful peaceful atmosphere of silence and the beautiful ancient decoration.
Located in a beautifully restored shop house setting, this restaurant is owned by a not-for profit organization. With food inspired by chefs from around the world, the menus feature the highest standards of carefully selected contemporary Vietnamese and International cuisine. All the restaurant revenue goes towards supporting the comprehensive program, where trainees spend part of each week at the restaurant, applying what they have learned in their classes.
Leading travels in Cambodia won’t be possible without motivated and qualified team. For many years, EXO Travel has been involved in the tourism program at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. Due to lower number of registration, the department of tourism was facing some difficulties and rang the bell. EXO Travel decided to launch a fundraising campaign with the strong support of other local DMC to contribute this fruitful program.
Spreading the word on plastic waste at Sala Bai School
Cambodia’s team was on board at Sala Bai School to discuss about waste and plastic pollution. Since 2002, Sala Bai School is training youth underprivileged Cambodian in different valuable jobs in the hospitality industry. At different level, the tourism sector could have an impact on the environment and its life surrounding. Knowing that every day, 1 visitor is using 3 to 4 plastic bottles of water, without having a proper solution to recycle them, waste and plastic pollution are a problem that everyone should tackle seriously.
At EXO Travel, a team of volunteer decided to spread the word about this issue and have conducted 2 series of training on waste and plastic pollution to the whole 2018 promotion.
The Green River Project was born when people from EXO Travel Cambodia realized that the rivers of their own country were filled with waste and plastic. Not only this is damaging the magnificent landscapes of the Kingdom Of Cambodia, but it is also harmful to the people living in affected communities across the country. Waste pollution burnt, especially plastic, is seriously endangering the lives of the whole population on daily basis.
What do they do?
The aim of this project is to partner with Universities/schools/youth volunteer groups around the country to spread awareness on waste pollution and to inform local inhabitants on the negative consequences of disposing unproperly of their waste (such as throwing garbage & plastic in the rivers).
EXO Travel Cambodia has officially signed a partnership with the Prek Leap National College of Agriculture (PNCA) in order to address this matter together with their students. Thus, PNCA has gathered 235 volunteer students and EXO Travel Team has organized training for students on “Waste pollution & plastic waste”, in order to share their knowledge on this topic and help them to understand all the stakes behind this major issue. In total, 130 students have been on the ground to spread awareness on waste management to local inhabitants.
In 2018, we extended the project to Siem Reap. In partnership with Sala Bai School and Artisans of Angkor, EXO Travel employees led four workshops to train their staff and students about adopting good waste management practices and were able to reach more than 140 people. In 2019, thanks to a fruitful collaboration with Artisans Of Angkor we trained more than 50 supervisors at a silk producing village where there was also a chance to brainstorm on plastic free/plastic reduction in their production process.
We have invited GAEA, a waste collection company based in Siem Reap, to be part of the project at Sala Bai School and together we trained more than 150 students. The day after, the trainees became the trainers. Sala Bai students shared their knowledge to 120 kids around 10 years old from the Wat Svay Primary School before going all together along the Siem Reap River to collect a total of 250 kg of
trash in one hour! We were extremely happy with the results and all participants received the EXO Foundation comic book “Don’t waste your waste” and more than 120 refillable bottles were given to the students.
We have also initiated a collaboration with GIZ and Plastic Free Cambodia to reach 50 Khnar Po villagers, a community living by the river. They have received a training helping them to prevent the pollution of their natural surroundings.
EXO Foundation Support
We have started our collaboration in 2018 in order to help them setting up the first campaigns and we hope this will be a long term one. We like that it is an initiative led by EXO Travel team in Cambodia, in partnership with other Civil Society organizations.
EXO Foundation encourages EXO Travel to spread Green River project activities and to offer travelers to contribute to this project.
EXO Travel Cambodia as just welcomed a new Product Manager, Mr Trevor Ranges, he is already very committed to sustainability and we are really looking forward working together with him. We are happy to share with you his very valuable testimony on “Zero waste lifestyle” and we hope it will inspire others to follow his lead…In 2015, Trevor co-wrote this article below in 2Mag (as its Managing Editor) about plastic waste pollution and how Thailand is one of the worst plastic polluters in the world. At the start of 2017, Trevor decided to try living a plastic-free lifestyle, quickly discovered how difficult it is to do in Bangkok, and went in search of a community of people, businesses, and organizations who could help him reduce his plastic footprint in the hopes of showing others the way.
Throughout my life I have been drawn to the ocean. Before I could even walk, I could swim. Set in the sand, I would immediately crawl into the sea. My pre-teen family vacations were spent on the islands of the Caribbean and the coasts of Mexico; my teens and twenties were split between California and Hawaii; and in-between I spent my summers at the New Jersey shore. It was there that I had one of my first jobs at around ten years of age, strolling up and down the sand, picking up trash before the daily beachgoers arrived.
I would mostly collect beer bottles and fireworks left by teenagers the night before, as well as the occasional syringe or used condom. Disgusting as that may have been, the amount of trash was relatively minimal and mostly incidental: very little trash was found along the coastline, predominantly in the form of sea glass. In my 30s, I moved to Asia and began a career as a travel writer, specializing in beaches and islands. It was around this time I began to notice an increasingly disturbing problem: coastal plastic pollution.
Much like climate change, every day there is new evidence of how bad the plastic waste problem has become. Some is impossible to ignore: a 2016 beach clean up on Bali, organized by The Bali Green School with the assistance of Bye Bye Plastic Bags, collected 40 tonnes of plastic from 55 locations around the island. 40 tonnes in a day. As impressive as that effort was, that’s literally a drop in the bucket: experts estimate that the oceans currently contain 150 million tonnes of plastic waste. And the amount of plastic being used (usually once), disposed of (typically not recycled), and ending up in our oceans (as well as rivers and khlongs) continues to increase.
In a recent report, the American conservation group Ocean Conservancy estimated that just five countries (China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand) are responsible for as much as 60 percent of plastic waste dumped into the ocean. Official figures here in Thailand estimate that Bangkok alone produces 11,500 tonnes of garbage each day (at least one tonne of which is plastic), a figure that is growing by ten percent a year.
Cumulatively, this results in eight million tonnes of plastic entering the ocean every year, the equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world, according to a 2016 UN report. Thus, while it seems impressive that a Bali beach clean up removed 40,000 kg of trash from the beach in one day, this represents only .05% of the trash entering the ocean each year. In reality, even our best efforts to clean up our mess are essentially futile. Unless we want to live on a planet literally covered in plastic, we need to stop using so many disposable plastic products now!
Because of my love of the beach and sea I could no longer be a cause of this problem. I started feeling guilty whenever I got food delivery that arrived with five or more plastic products per meal. I couldn’t simply draw the line at telling 7-11 “Mai sai thung; mai 00 rot,” every time I bought a beer. Concern for the future of all living things on the planet motivated me to make my journey known to others; my heart was telling me that we must succeed, and that would require changing the hearts and minds of an entire society. As challenging as that sounded, I had to believe that, if I could drastically (if not entirely) reduce my plastic footprint, I would do whatever I could to make a trail for others to follow.
Besides, how hard could it be to stop purchasing plastic products?
Every journey starts with a single step, and my early ones weren’t incredibly difficult. While friends chuckled at first, many soon expressed guilt about their own wasteful behavior and told me that they were inspired to consciously reduce use of bags and bottles, and the occasional straw, but they also admitted the implausibility of going plastic free. At the same time, I gradually discovered how invasive disposable plastic has become in our lives, and how hard it was to give up all plastic products; they’re simply everywhere! I needed to find a community of like minded anti-plastic activists for ideas, inspiration, and collaboration.
Week after week, I discovered passionate people here in Thailand that were both living the solution and developing solutions for others. At universities. In civil society. At businesses large and small. Even in sectors of the government. Both Thais and expatriates were working on homegrown solutions. Others were collaborating on regional and global initiatives. Little did most of them know, but a community already existed. In fact, the community was so diverse and widespread that most were too busy on their own efforts and initiatives to be aware of each other. It was a community that hadn’t yet discovered itself.
Ultimately, I realized that my own struggle was all of our struggle. I believe, as a country, as a planet, we will eventually replace plastic with bio -friendly alternatives; it’s already happening. Slowly. But every day that passes adds billions of plastic waste items to our environment. Thus, I set out on my journey to eliminate my plastic footprint with the aim of showing others the way, realizing that we must give up our addiction to plastic as quickly as we can.
REDUCING MY PLASTIC FOOTPRINT: STEP BY STEP
There are 4 primary plastic products that are arguably the biggest problem: plastic bags, bottles, straws and take-away food packaging such as food containers and cups. These are also the 4 that are the easiest to give up.
STEP 1
G0 Strawless:Fucking straws. They’re worse than mosquitoes. At least bug spray keeps the mozzies away. I frequently carry a pyrex glass straw but I still occasionally forget to say no when I order a drink, especially in bars. It’s one of few plastic items that are forced on us. It’s infuriating. Once it’s in that glass, even if you don’t use it, it will be thrown away. Along with the 500 million other straws used every day. That figure is from 2013 in the USA. While no one has calculated the number used here in Thailand, the global figure is easily in the billions. Billions of straws a day. Never to be recycled. Think about that.
YOU need to stop using straws. Yes YOU, the person reading this article. You really don’t need that straw.
A: The glass you’re drinking out of is probably clean and the liquid you’re drinking is already touching the glass anyway. B: Don’t worry about getting lipstick on the glass: if you’re in a restaurant you don’t have to clean it, and you can reapply after lunch. C: Try to order things that don’t need straws, like beer or hot instead of iced tea or coffee. D: It’s not that hard to carry your own, especially if you also carry a reusable cup for drinks or water.
For those willing to carry around a straw, there are a few options. And yes, it sounds crazy, but when you break out your personal glass straw to enjoy a cocktail you just me by purchasing ovable straws. paid 300++ baht for, your friends sucking on cheap plastic straws will want one too. Otherwise, there are also some great all-natural alternatives.
One day, two girls working together at a resort on Koh Lipe, after seeing thousands of plastic straws littering the beach, decided that something had to be done. Warunyupa “Oil” Dongrumkan, the Thai partner of the soon-to-be Bamboo Sisters, had family in northern Thailand, where an abundance of bamboo grew naturally, so the two decided they could make straws out of that. Dedicating themselves to a sustainable model of only using natural bamboo growth, the sisters set about learning how to harvest, clean, treat, and manufacture bamboo straws that required no farming and no chemicals. While their no-farming model would limit production by Oil’s family in Phrae to around 3000 straws per month, the method would ensure that the natural eco-diversity of the area wouldn’t be affected.
While the goal was to first replace all plastic straws on Koh Lipe and then expand outward, online orders from around Thailand hijacked the concept, and sales demand required the sisters to recruit another family, this time in Chiang Mai, to learn the process. Two other families are currently being trained in other areas with the goal of developing production in various areas of Thailand, near different markets, in order to create a more sustainable supply chain. Bamboo Sisters offers two sizes of straw that come in four packs for personal use and offer bulk rates for a growing number of restaurants, bars, and hotels throughout Thailand. Purchase of their straws goes directly to support the families that produce the products.
Aside from bamboo, there are a growing number of straw-friendly restaurants using paper and stainless steel straws, and even straws made from morning glory and lemongrass stalks. If you send me an email, I’ll share a Google map with the locations of straw-friendly restaurants so you can get a drink at a restaurant that avoids plastic straws! The map is open-source, so you can add other straw-friendly restaurants to it too! ([email protected]) #Strawssuck. #GoStrawless. #StopSucking.
STEP 2
Use Better Take-away Food Containers: One early challenge was ordering take-away food; it was hard to order takeaway food without it arriving with numerous plastic bags and either plastic or foam food containers. Gradually, I discovered a few restaurants that used bio-friendly packaging, including Daniel Thaiger Via Uber Eats, which led me to Gracz packaging and, later, Veerasa. Dr. Weerachat Kittirattanapaiboon, M.D., established Biodegradable Packaging for Environment Public Company Limited in January of 2005, on an area of 48 rai on Asia Road, Chainat Province. As a medical doctor, Dr. Weerachat first developed his packaging because he wanted to produce a healthier alternative to styrofoam food packaging. Consequently, while the company’s packaging is certainly environmentally friendly, it wasn’t established in anticipation of a trend towards greener products but for health: the company introduced environmentally friendly products to the market before a market for such products really existed.
While I hadn’t discovered many initiatives on the part of the government to discourage or prohibit plastic or foam food packaging, Dr. Weerachat explains that they have received a great deal of support, both directly and indirectly, from local and provincial governments. With the national Departments of Health and Environment Gracz has formed a partnership for bio-friendly packaging as part of the “Clean Food, Good Taste” certification process.
In addition, 15 provincial governments have agreed to a Memorandum Of Understanding to be “no foam” provinces, all National Parks in Thailand have pledged to go foam-free, and Wattana district of Bangkok has also committed to a “no foam” packaging pledge that is expected to expand throughout the city, including around Sanam Luang, whose vendors have also pledged to go foam-free. Chiang Mai University is completely foam-free: Gracz supplies the University directly, and all the shops on campus get their products from the University.
While many of these “no foam” commitments aren’t codified in law, Dr. Weerachat feels that it is not the best strategy to force anyone to change, that they should do so “from the heart.” I brought up the King’s Sufficiency Economy, to which Dr. Weerachat strongly agreed: “Thailand is an agricultural country, but we only use around 40% of what we grow. We have a lot of agricultural waste,” he continued, explaining that rice husks and palm leaves are typically discarded, and even bamboo or water hyacinth that are otherwise considered waste products can be used to produce bio-friendly packaging, and Gracz is using them to do so, creating some very aesthetically interesting looking products. Consequently, Gracz is also experimenting with creating products out of other types of agricultural waste. Gracz promotes a product cycle that goes “From Nature to Nature”, which assumes that their products are composted in a place where the compost facilitates new plant growth. Gracz packaging is compostable and even convertable to biogas (including the biogas the Gracz factories are powered by) and their latest experimental products have plant seeds within the containers so that plants can grow from the discarded packaging!
STEP 3
No More Plastic Bottles: Plastic water bottles are a horrible problem. The obvious solution is to stop buying and throwing away plastic bottles. We are using hundreds of billions of plastic bottles every year, and only a small fraction of them are being recycled. This includes you, by the way. Buy a reusable water bottle. Nearly every office has a water machine you can use to refill your water. Every gym has them. There are even organizations already working to help make this easier for you.
The most successful in the region inCambodia’s Refill not Landfill. Refill not Landfill supplies businesses around Cambodia with eco-friendly aluminum bottles to sell or give away, provided that they do one thing: provide free water refills to anyone who has one of their bottles. With nearly one hundred locations around popular tourist areas in Cambodia, Visitors can easily find water as the local refill stations are listed on the bottle!
A similar program initiated by Trash Hero is first of such here in Thailand. As Refill not Landfill does, Trash Hero sells stainless steel water bottles to local businesses at cost. Local businesses can then sell those bottles to customers for a small profitibut only if the local business agrees to have a refill station that provides anyone with a Trash Hero water bottle, no matter where the bottle was purchased, with unlimited free drinking water.
In Thailand, Trash Hero has sold more than 30,000 bottles to nearly 200 businesses. If each bottle sold prevents 365 being purchased each year, they estimate that they have prevented 12 million single-use plastic bottles from being used once and tossed away. In addition to similar program that was launched in Indonesia in August 2017, the goal is to distribute 115,000 bottles through 500 participating businesses in 30 locations worldwide within the next three years, resulting in an estimated reduction of 41 million plastic bottles!
For those of you who can’t be bothered, you can still buy your own refillable bottle: some even have built-in water filtration that removes up to 99.9999% of bacteria and other contaminants. With one of those, you can literally refill from any tap and drink both safely and environmentally friendly! Although many are actually made out of plastic, they typically are not made with BPA, PVC, or phthalates, and still reduce single-use plastic waste. While these are currently a bit tricky to find here in Bangkok, with a growing trend towards responsibility, they should be easier to find soon!
STEP 4
Say “No” to Plastic Bags: According to the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA), Bangkok alone uses around 600,000 plastic bags every day. Less conservative estimates put the number at 5 to 10 bags per person per day, translating to 200 million plastic bags per day nationwide. Using the BMAs projections, Bangkok produced more than 5,000 tonnes (that’s 5 million kg) of plastic bag waste every day in 2016. That’s literally millions of millions of plastic bags that end up blowing across the countryside, littering our land, polluting our waters, washing up on our beaches, and ending up on the oceanic food chain.
Fortunately, there are some actions that indicate that the tide may be turning. In August 2016, a campaign was launched to cut down on the use of plastic bags; the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion enlisted 15 major supermarket chains to withhold the distribution of plastic bags to consumers on the 15th of each month. This one-day “ban” resulted in a reduction in the use of 1.8 million plastic bags. Thammasat University, Rangsit Campus, has employed a similar approach, prohibiting all shops on campus from giving away free plastic bags. Otherwise, quitting plastic bags is easy enough. The first step is simply saying, “No”, particularly at 7-11 and other “convenience” stores. I was already carrying my own cloth bags to do my grocery shopping before this journey began. And avoiding take-away food unless I already knew it came in a paper bag gradually got easier. What bothered me was how casually everyone else used a plastic bag every time they bought anything, no matter how small.
Rather than trying to convince everyone to say no, I wondered why 7-11 and other shops didn’t simply stop forcing everyone to take a bag (along with often unnecessary straws). Didn’t it just make sense, at least from a financial standpoint, only to give people bags if they asked for them? Consequently, when I arrived at CP-ALL (7-11’s parent company) for my meeting with representatives of it’s Reputation Management Department, this was the first thing I wanted to know. The answer, surprisingly, was: They’ve been trying to. In fact, 7-11 implemented a four-point 7 Go Green initiative in 2011-2012 that included a Plastic Bag Reduction Campaign under the name “Think about Plastic Bags”. Over three months in the first year of the campaign, 7-11 ran a pilot program at 500 stores in which they instructed employees to ask customers if they needed a bag for small items: 7-11 estimates that they saved 4.4 million bags over that short period.
When I asked about the costs, the reply was that they those costs are relatively small and that they actually care more about the environment. As for changing to properly biodegradable plastics, they claim these costs are much higher: 8 to 9 times more. And that a large part of the cost for such products are taxes on imports. They feel that the government should help with subsidies, both for producers of plastic-alternative and biodegradable packaging, and for companies that want to use those products but would have to absorb high costs of doing so. The attitude at CP/7-11 is a practical one: they are a business after all. If they stopped offering plastic bags altogether or began charging customers for plastic bags, that could give an advantage to their competitors. This isn’t simply hyperbole, they have evidence to support it. They also discovered that, in an enclosed area where a campaign of education is implemented, it’s easier to create an environment of acceptance towards bag bans or surcharges.
The first to initiate such a program was Thammasat University Rangsit campus. The university provided tote bags to students at the beginning of the program (along with canteens to reduce single-use plastic water bottles), before all shops on campus were required to charge customers if they wanted a plastic bag. The program (along with a similar one at Mahidol University) was adopted by students and businesses with little to no hassle, but in the areas around the edges of campus where non-students, unaware of the campaign, were confronted with an unexpected surcharge on bags, there were numerous customer complaints.
Over the past six years of the campaign, 7-11 has measured the opinions of their customers regarding their anti-bag initiatives, both those that encourage employees to ask customers if they want bags and those that ask customers to think twice about opting for convenience over the environment. Such efforts have included screensavers on POS cash registers to remind employees to ask customers if they want plastic bags; in-store posters, stickers on checkout counters, and customer-facing POS displays that encourage customers to say no to plastic bags; they even have plastic bags that have the “Reduce plastic bags,”slogan printed on them; gotta love the irony. “Don’t let the retailers be the scapegoats.” says Samrej Zeepongsekul of CP ALL’s Corporate Communication’s Division, “It requires a national collaboration to change such things.” Being careful to not shirk their responsibility, 7-11 wants to remind us that they are only 2,000-some stores, while there are more than a million mom-and-pop shops and small food vendors that also distribute plastic bags, which is why their public campaign extends beyond their retail outlets with banners in rural towns and on the sides of songtaews encouraging people to “Persuade Thais to reduce bags.”
Echoing Dr. Weerachat of Gracz, without legislation to enforce a bag tax or bag ban, the 7-11 strategy has been to educate people about the problem and change people’s attitudes. “There are two methods to address this problem: the best way would be to convince people, to invite people to care, to get people in their hearts and minds,” Mr. Samrej explained. “That is the long-lasting way, but it is also too slow as it may take 5-10 years before it enters their subconscious as it has in northern Europe. The other way is faster: the law like they do in China,” he continues. “For Thai people, we think the best is a mixture of the two.” Still, CP ALL recognizes the difficulty, as most Thai customers still feel they need a straw and employees give bags out of habit and courtesy. Mr. Banyat says he sees it as a learning experience, that change is occurring more and more, but that it takes time.
In the 3rd year of the 7 Go Green campaign, 7-11 started reaching out to school children, working with the Department of Education and producing cartoon content that highlighted such problems as plastic waste going down storm drains and fish eating plastic bags, as well as social media campaigns and Video competitions. Khidtoong Clubs have been established at around 40 school campuses and claim to have 50,000 student members. Next up is an online game where people are questioned what items they would need a bag for or not. The claim that 7-11 is the poster child for irresponsible plastic waste is clearly unfounded.
Do these efforts absolve 7-11 of their contribution to Thailand’s irresponsible convenience-driven plastic waste culture? Is the responsibility on CP ALL to do better to compel their staff not to thoughtlessly give away superfluous straws and unnecessary bags? I still shop at 7-11 and I never walk out the door with a straw or a bag. How about you?
STEP 5
Find Inspiration for Upping my Anti-plastic Game: Although I had made great strides in steps 1-4, grocery challenge. In most major grocery stores, including my preferred ones, practically all fruits and vegetables are wrapped in plastic. Almost all of the meat, cheese, dairy and bread are wrapped in single use plastic bags. Shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste; most toiletries in fact : plastic. There are a few paper-based packages, such as juice and yoghurt but many of these have plastic caps; coffee, beans, pasta almost everything that comes in a box, such as breakfast cereals, are invariably also wrapped in plastic inside the box. I went home from the first shop with a package of Hilltribe Organics eggs and a jar of jam.
I added a few farmer’s markets to my calendar but, because I had so little food at home, I ended up eating out a lot in these early days, which wasn’t really a solution to the overall problem. The propagation of plastic is more insidiously ingrained in our society than I thought and, in order to adopt new shopping habits and new eating habits, I realized that my anti-plastic crusade would require a serious lifestyle change. Luckily I met someone early in the year who was a great inspiration and source of information.
Enter Madeleine Recknagel, educator, practitioner and champion of a zero waste lifestyle, and inspirational role model for those looking to leave a reduced plastic footprint. Our first meeting, over a lunch of vegetarian fare, firmly established the padawan and jedi status of our relationship, as I came bearing my pyrex straw while Madeleine unsheathed a full array of eating utensils that she carries with her in an upcycled cloth carrier. One thing I quickly learned from Madeleine was that creating less waste was a superior strategy to finding eco-friendly alternatives, as biodegradable straws and bags (or banana peels for that matter) don’t always decompose completely in landfills. And while I would discover that Madeleine is clearly on a crusade against single-use plastic, both developing educational materials to stem its usage and leading or joining regular beach cleanups, the lifestyle she espouses is zero waste on numerous fronts.
As outlined on her blog, “The Sustainable Self: Creating a More Responsible community with you leading the way,” Madeleine not only follows a seven-point strategy to personal waste management, she is actively involved in encouraging others to take action. She proposes we rethink, refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, recycle, and rot, to deal with the various challenges of plastic and other waste.
The first few R’s are surprisingly obvious and I had already adopted several of them: Refuse was a no-brainer: say no to plastic bags, straws, and other non-essential single-use plastic products. Reduce your plastic usage is a little trickier: you may find it hard to give up all items contained in plastic packaging, but you can often choose glass or paper alternatives. On her blog, Madeleine suggests considering the transition as a step by step process: “Do you really need all the things you have in the bathroom? Is it good for you? Do you understand the ingredients you use on your skin? Check whether there are better natural options.”
Once you are open to different solutions for your lifestyle, those that are arguably better for both the environment and your health, it’s easy to start to Rethink your habits, including making DIY products. With a smile, she points to her own glorious skin as evidence that her simple, all-natural beauty products are more than adequate. I can only imagine how shiny her kitchen counters must be, as she also produces her own household cleaning products. Madeleine was a huge source of inspiration on this front, explaining to me how to make my own toothpaste and deodorant, and suggesting that I use shampoo bars, a loofah sponge, and soap nuts (for washing clothing).
Reuse is pretty simple, particularly when you start with my neighborhood Thai restaurant that I had stopped rethinking, reducing, and refusing. While I wasn’t ready to getting delivery from since my plastic ban, and to bring one to give up my beloved Emporium salad bar, I simply washed out the office for take-away lunches. Madeleine explained that Thai the plastic bags I used to purchase my salads and brought food stalls were perfectly willing to put your food in them and them back again and again. When I mentioned that I had her matter-of-fact-ness emboldened me to make it a habit.
While I haven’t upped my entire waste-reduction game to her dried fruit and nuts, Madeleine says that she carries small level, I’m certainly inspired to continue improving, replacing cloth bags for such individual items, and isn’t afraid to ask items packaged in plastic with DIY alternatives as I finish up for a manager if grocery store staff are uncertain about what I have. My home is too small for a garden, so I’ll have to allowing her to use them. Otherwise, Madeleine buys most of wait on Rot and the whole concept of composting (though I have her groceries at farmers markets and local wet markets, and started feeding the neighborhood animals more). Recycling, I shops for bulk dried goods, including rice, grains, and nuts, do the best I can, given Thailand’s recycling infrastructure, and every several months in Chinatown.
Repair comes fairly naturally to me. Following her advice and Madeleine is also a fan of the three-tiered Thai tiffin box her example, however, certainly set me on a more hopeful path, (aka a pinto) for takeaway food. I had already purchased and I recommend Visiting her blog to get inspired and take action.
STEP 6
Offset my plastic footprint: There had been a growing buzz about an organization called Trash Hero, whom I had discovered while producing our Green Issue (2Mag #95), commending them for a weekly trash cleanups. The founding chapter on Koh Lipe has run a volunteer beach clean up every week for nearly 200 weeks. Successful chapters have since been founded across Southeast Asia and even in the US and Europe. Having been a solitary Trash Hero since my childhood (to this day picking up plastic whenever I’m at the beach), I set up a meeting at what I believed to be the headquarters of Trash Hero in Bangkok.
When I first walked into the meeting room/design studio/classroom of Starboard Surfboards at Taco Lake (the unofficial HQ of volunteer-based Bangkok Trash Hero), there were translucent sheets of plastic covering the floor which, at the time, seemed too ludicrous to register. They were blueprints for stand-up paddle (SUP) surfboards being examined by Svein Rasmussen (Starboard’s Chief Innovator) who explained that they liked to get a functional perspective on their board designs.
I now regard it as absurd that our first encounter featured so much plastic; literally covering the floor. In retrospect, I realize that these sheets of plastic are a useful reminder that there is a re son plastic has so ubiquitously invaded our lives: it’s practicality. And that the use of plastic does not, in and of itself, have to be eradicated from our lives; not yet, at least. Later in our meeting, Svein informed me that they are acquiring a plastic recycling machine so they can melt down and repurpose all the plastic Starboard uses.
Before the meeting started however, Erik Schnitzler (Starboard R&D Windsurfing) walked me around the meeting room/design studio/classroom: beyond a SUP-shaped sofa, educational posters adorned the wall, serving as a backdrop for weekly presentations given to international school students who volunteer to come in for education and activism. First they clean up trash, then they discuss solutions. To inspire them, Svein tells students that recycling is going to create huge future business opportunities and he shows them recycled products such as Parley for the Ocean Adidas shoes and the surfboards leaning in corners and resting upon various furnishings: the rails on one board are strips of balsawood; the fin boxes of other boards were made from repurposed fishing nets; the blank of another was made of recycled Styrofoam (EPS) that was picked up by Trash Hero on an island off the west coast of Thailand near Koh Lipe as a pilot project trying to investigate how they could use styrofoam from the beaches to put into the boards.
I told Svein about this article and the causes that 2Mag is passionate about. I told him what I was passionate about. I think he appreciated that, as a kid, one of my first jobs was picking up garbage on the beach. I regretted missing a chance to join them for their latest cleanup: Trash Hero Bangkok had taken dozens of volunteers to ride SUP boards around Banglamphu Canal to gather floating trash with nets. It sounded way more fun than when I was picking up beer bottles and cigarette butts left by teenagers on the beach.
We discussed the differences. When I was a kid, I did it for the paycheck as the amount of trash was quite small. Today, the problem is overwhelming. Increasing even. Giving full credit to the efforts of Trash Hero volunteers everywhere, I suggested that cleaning up trash nowadays, while heroic and meaningful, is shouting at the wind. “Nonsense!” Svein might well has exclaimed, his rebuttal swift and Vigorous: “It’s about creating awareness.” “Making it fun.” “Showing off the effort and taking pride in the work.” “Even picking up one or two things isn’t the point,”Svein explained.“It’s about creating awareness and inspiring others.” When I asked questions about other Trash Hero programs, Svein and his team were candidly unaware of what other chapters were doing: they were busy with their own efforts. I was aware of the successful chapters in Koh Lipe and Ao Nang; I wondered how the Lipe Community Waste Management trash collection program could be expanded to other chapters. I told them about Refill not Landfill in Cambodia and wondered why the Trash Hero bottle program has not been widely implemented in Bangkok. Swiftly, it was time for “inspiring others” and Svein put me on the spot: “You can do it.” His immediacy and conviction that I should shoulder this responsibility was quite convincing.
What I discovered was that Trash Hero is a completely fiat, volunteer organization. It’s is a collective of individual heroes rather than a hierarchical structure. Thus, it seems natural that, while Swiss native Roman Peters and Thai Sakdadech “Meuk” Sutsawasng founded the first Trash Hero, Roman is no longer affiliated with the original branch but is still active in promoting new Trash Hero chapters worldwide. In less than three years since its inception, Trash Hero now boasts 41 chapters in eight different countries, including 22 chapters in Thailand. As far as Svein knew, there wasn’t even a proper database of the estimated 20,000 heroes that Trash Hero Thailand has inspired over the past four years. Information is shared mouth to mouth between heroes, regardless of chapter. When I pointed out that they could use someone to help coordinate the efforts of different chapters and develop a simple database of members that can be utilized to sign petitions to ban plastic bags, for example, Svein immediately suggested I was the man to do it.
Svein then suggested we “take it upstream”: “Who in the government can support legislation that would immediately ban plastic bags?” We made agreement to share our contacts and start coordinating our efforts. A lot of the focus then centered on “How to utilize Trash Hero. How to move it forward.” When Svein talks of inspiring people or creating awareness, you can tell he’s looking for people who can make a spark, who can make bold strokes at pressing problems. Trash Hero believes that every one of us can be a Trash Hero. The mission is to create sustainable, community-based projects that remove existing waste, and reduce future waste by inspiring long-term behavior change through Action & Awareness, Education, Sustainable Projects, and Inspiration. That sounded good to me.
STEP 7
“Create Awareness” and Facilitate Community Engagement:Svein’s call to action and the youthful enthusiasm of his new intern Bailey Rosen, inspired me to get actively engaged in solutions at a larger scale, and to expand my effort to help others promote their own initiatives to facilitate behavioral change in Thai people. I had already met with developers to create a smartphone app to help track my plastic footprint, with the goal of offering tips for others to track and reduce their own plastic usage, as well as links to trash cleanups, anti-plastic alternative products, and lists of restaurants that used bio-friendly packaging and/or non-plastic straws.
As my incipient community grew, I discovered a Hong Kong-based organization (Ocean Recovery Alliance) developing a plastic tracking app that I hope to introduce to Thailand as I retool my own, ideally for children. I met restaurateurs looking for bio-friendly packaging and introduced them directly to Gracz, Bamboo Sisters, and other small suppliers. Bailey and I started fleshing out the Google map with the location of “straw-unfriendly”restaurants (for lack of a better term). I spoke with Roman from Trash Hero about helping expand the Trash Hero water bottle refill program in Bangkok. I even collaborated with my team at 2Mag to help launch the Ecotopia shopping experience at Siam Discovery scheduled for December 14 to promote awareness of the lifestyle, showcase locally-made “upcycled” products, offer workshops, and organize a dinner for this community so that they could finally meet one another in person. If everything goes according to plan, everyone will be drinking from non-plastic straws at the dinner and post-event cocktail party! Things have really been coming together, and I hope the launch of Ecotopia at Siam Discovery will be a great step forward in the acceptance of sustainable living in Thailand, including the reduction of single-use plastic straws, bottles, bags, and take-away food containers.
STEP 8
Change People’s Hearts: While evidence of this trend toward sustainability is popping up all over Thailand, this is not a foreign concept in the Kingdom. Throughout his long reign, King Bhumibol Adulyadej preached the concept of the “sufficiency economy” 7a philosophy that espoused sustainability, environmentalism, and making do with what one has.
Modern development has caused changes in all aspects of Thai society, but arguably the most deleterious has been the adoption of a wasteful Western philosophy of consumerism and convenience. In his own words, the King preached: “A sufficient economy means to have enough to support ourselves…we have to take a careful step backward…” clear call to Thai people to return to moderation and prudence. The Thai people I have talked with who support my crusade against plastic sing the same refrain. They believe that, in their hearts, Thai people want to do the right thing: they simply need education and the option of alternatives. The expatriate foreigners who call Thailand their home tend to look at the problem from a more global perspective: Thailand’s problem is, in fact, the world’s problem, and we must develop solutions here that have succeeded elsewhere while helping solutions here spread abroad.
It has been inspiring to discover so many individuals, organizations, and businesses addressing this problem. Unfortunately the amount of plastic we consume is both wasteful and unsustainable, and it continues to increase to a shocking degree: in 2017 we will have produced approximately double the amount of plastic we did in 2010, around 350 million metric tonnes. In my heart, I believe that we will, sooner or later, ban most single-use plastics or replace them with eco-friendly alternatives. It’s already happening. But we can not and should not wait for our government or businesses to take action. I am making great progress reducing my plastic footprint. Now you must do so too.” Please read the full article here. About the Author: After moving to Thailand from Hawaii in 2001, Trevor Ranges explored the beaches and islands of Southeast Asia over a decade as a travel writer. My Plastic Footprint is a passion project launched in 2017 to utilize his personal and professional network to combat plastic waste. After discovering a community of passionate individuals and organizations throughout the year, Trevor aims to launch My Plastic Footprint platform in 2018 to help others follow in his footsteps of reducing plastic waste one straw, bottle, bag, and package at a time. To get involved, contact him at [email protected].