News

The Nation 07 June 2019 | PRATCH RUJIVANAROM

Environmental campaigners are urging the new government to overhaul what they see as its “overly pro-industrial investment policy” and move the country down the path of sustainable development, in order to protect its citizens and the country from costly environmental and health damages.

Penchom Saetang, director of EARTH, said that despite Thailand’s “quite good” environmental protection law, the country’s environmental protection standards had recently been significantly downgraded to a worrisome level, as many laws and regulations were changed to make it easier to construct factories.

The Guardian 05 June 2019 | Damian Carrington

Health effects of ingestion of microplastics via food, water and breathing still unknown

The average person eats at least 50,000 particles of microplastic a year and breathes in a similar quantity, according to the first study to estimate human ingestion of plastic pollution.

Chiang Rai Times 03 June 2019 | Editor

BANGKOK – “Ending Plastic Pollution” has been set as the theme for World Environment Day on June 5, but Thailand is falling behind Asian and European countries in the fight against plastic waste.

Thailand is the world’s sixth biggest contributor of ocean waste, while China is the largest. Thailand generates 1.03 million tons of plastic waste per year, with over 3% of that finding its way into the ocean, Tara Buakamsri, Thailand country director for Greenpeace.

Bangkok Post 31 May 2019 | Thodsapol Hongtong

A week after a fire broke out on a container ship at the Laem Chabang Port, sending up toxic fumes that harmed hundreds of people, there are more questions than answers about the mysterious incident.

"There are irregularities, which inevitably raised suspicions. The owner of the ship did not declare all cargo and intentionally concealed some of it, including extremely dangerous chemicals in 13 containers," Deputy Transport Minister Pailin Chuchottaworn said after inspecting the scene at the port on Thursday.

The Guardian 28 May 2019 | Hannah Ellis-Petersen  

Region begins pushback against deluge of plastic and electronic waste from UK, US and Australia

For the past year, the waste of the world has been gathering on the shores of south-east Asia. Crates of unwanted rubbish from the west have accumulated in the ports of the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam while vast toxic wastelands of plastics imported from Europe and the US have built up across Malaysia.

The Nation 28 May 2019 | Pratch Rujivanarom

LOSSES from the huge fire and chemical spill at Laem Chabang Seaport in Chon Buri province on Saturday are estimated to be more than Bt100 million, while environmental campaigners have urged the authorities to demand compensation from the wrongdoers for damage to public health and the environment.

Penchom Saetang, director of Ecological Alert and Recovery – Thailand (Earth), insisted that the authorities should press for compensation from the owners of the shipment to remedy the damage to people’s health and the ecosystem.

PRI's The World 21 May 2019 | Patrick Winn

They call it “e-waste recycling.” But what happens inside Asia’s underground scrapyards looks more like crude alchemy.

Men and women, faces swaddled in cloth, hunch over steel furnaces. They melt down electronic guts ripped out of laptops and TVs. Under intense heat, gold and copper fused to circuit boards get soft and runny — and can be scraped into basins full of scalding, metallic sludge.

Down to Earth 16 May 2019 | Rashmi Shrivastav  

Agreement reached at 14th Conference of Parties to the Basel Convention to make global trade in plastic scrap more transparent and better regulated

CGTN 24 April 2019 |Alok Gupta

China's foreign waste import ban has turned Southeast Asian countries into an illegal dumping ground for recyclable plastic, exported mostly from the rich countries, a study released on Tuesday claimed.

The United States, the European Union, Australia, and Japan are shipping large consignments of plastic and other waste to Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Turkey, India, and Vietnam after China refused to recycle them last year. 

The Nation 20 February 2019 | PRATCH RUJIVANAROM

PROPOSED LAW AIMS TO BOOST INVESTMENT AT THE COST OF HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

THE POLLUTION crisis will only worsen if the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) pushes through the revised Factory Act, environmentalists warned yesterday.