Phitsanulok – the city of recycling

I read this article from the Sun by Dr Goh Ban Lee with great interest. Maybe it can be a role model to us and our local council. Read on.

MOST Malaysians might not have heard of Phitsanulok, a city of about 160,000 people in Thailand. This is understandable as the provincial capital is 377km north of Bangkok and does not have the tourist products that Malaysians like. This is a pity as there is a lot that one can learn from Phitsanulok.

It is very clean. Many have asserted that it is the cleanest city in Thailand and among the cleanest in Asia. Its cleanliness is not the result of round-the-clock sweeping. Like most cities, the garbage is collected once a day and streets are swept daily early in the morning.

It does have a unique feature – there are no garbage bins along the major roads. The city council removed almost all of them about four years ago as part of its effort to keep the city clean.

Clearly, the residents do not throw rubbish indiscriminately.

The Phitsanulok City Council, especially the long-serving Mayor Premrudee Charmpoonod, should also be applauded. With help from the GTZ of Germany, she was instrumental in setting up the Community Based Waste Management about ten years ago. Solid waste management (SWM) is seen as the responsibility of the communities, with the local council playing a supporting role.

This is in contrast to what is happening in Malaysia. Here, SWM is seen as the responsibility of the government and the appointed concessionaires. As such, many Malaysians are under the delusions that they can throw rubbish anywhere outside their houses and there will be someone to clean up after them.

An important factor in Phitsanulok is that about 90% of the things that make cities dirty, such as used plastic bags, newspapers, paper cups, cans and bottles are collected and sold to recyclable collection outlets. The city is working towards achieving a 100% collection of recyclable materials.

What’s more, some residents with landed compounds practise vermi-composting – the use of earth worms to digest organic wastes to produce composts. There are also plans to encourage the setting up of four or five vermi-compost farms so that all organic wastes, which account for about 40% of solid wastes, do not have to be disposed at the city landfill.

Phitsanulok municipal leaders and researchers in the Naresuan University believe that in the near future, there will be no need for a landfill in Phitsanulok. At the very least, the lifespan of its existing landfill can be prolonged considerably.

Indeed, plastic wastes in the landfill are being recovered for recycling and there is research to treat the remaining soil so that it can be used as compost.

A large part of the success of Phitsanulok in recycling can be attributed to Dr Somthai Wongcharoen who began dealing with recyclable materials in 1974 with a start-up capital of 1,000 baht and an old pick-up truck. His company, Wongpanit, has grown into a multi-million baht enterprise dealing with thousands of tonnes of recyclable materials a year.

Had Wongpanit remained just a very successful waste recycling company, it would not have attracted much attention apart from making one man very rich. The fame of Wongpanit is that Samthai is an ardent campaigner of recycling – both to save the environment and make a living.

He initiated the setting up of material collection centres, which he calls “recyclable banks”, in schools, hospitals and other institutions. People who bring recyclable materials are paid for their efforts. He has also helped many to set up Wongpanit “franchises” all over Thailand.

He has personally trained several thousand Thais and others about running a successful recycling business. His core messages are: know the materials, waste separation and be honest.

As such, Wongpanit collection centres have clearly stated price lists and bold signs declaring that they do not accept illegal materials.

Now, there are more than 500 recyclable banks and more than 100 Wongpanit franchises in Thailand. A branch has been set up in Vientiane, Laos.

Malaysians also want clean cities and to save the environment. Indeed, hundreds of millions of tax ringgit are being spent yearly on SWM and talking about 3Rs – reduce, reuse and recycle.

There is money in waste management. Unfortunately, the attention is on the appointment of contractors to collect and transport waste and manage landfills and who has the power to appoint them. It should be on waste separation, collecting recyclable materials, processing them and selling them.