Cambodia's plastic problem

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Heng Heng Heng
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

Post by Heng Heng Heng »

If they made the bags $1 each just about everyone will reuse bags. 500r isn't enough but it's a start.
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

Post by Pragmatist »

A non definitive solution would be to open big dump site who advertise buying the used plastic and food white packaging as well as the plastic glasses for a very cheap price per kg. Then just compact them in big blocks, doesnt really solve the problem but it limit the ecologic impact at one site. And at least the streets will be half cleans. I know they do roads woth it in some place in Africa, but the process is terrible simce you need to burn it to apply it on the road.
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SuperStabwound
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

Post by SuperStabwound »

Plastic is a problem in all the world. And the "solution" of supermarkets is charge 5 cents the bag
Here lot of people uses cloth bags. This action is spreading every day and the same bag can last for months
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

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Plastic Kingdom: art exhibition questions Cambodia’s rampant waste problem
By: Lily Hess - Posted on: November 23, 2018 | Cambodia
On first arriving in Cambodia’s ever-expanding capital Phnom Penh, one is struck by the rubbish lying on the sides of the street; order noodle soup to go, and it comes in a plastic bowl with a plastic spoon – in a plastic bag. In a country seemingly in love with plastic, the only people recycling waste are the echchay – collectors that pass by rubbish heaps to pick up items for recycling, including plastic, glass, metals and anything else salvageable.

Miguel Jeronimo, a Portuguese photographer based in Phnom Penh, finds himself drawn to photographing these people, and this attraction is the inspiration behind the new exhibition he is curating, titled Plastic Kingdom – different views on waste and ecology in Cambodia.

“I was quite interested in the fact that [the echchay] are the only ones in a country like Cambodia that do something for the environment, even if they do it for livelihood, for survival. But then they are kind of discriminated [against] by society; it is a very low-income job,” Jeronimo told Southeast Asia Globe ahead of the exhibition opening.
Miguel Jeronimo, curator of ‘Plastic Kingdom – different views on waste and ecology in Cambodia’

He added, “I got inspired by that and wanted to do something at least to change the perception [of the echchay], so that people should look at them like ‘whoa, you are the ones cleaning our environment, and we don’t appreciate you enough.’”

Twenty artists, the majority of whom are Cambodian, will have their work featured at the exhibition, including the Battambang-based Bor Hak, who will create a sculpture from complementary soap that is given to guests at hotels. The soap for the sculpture was donated by an NGO called Eco-soap Bank, which collects the complementary soap bars from hotels, recycles them, and delivers them to rural schools.

Elsewhere, artist Khun Gechsoun will feature her wood carving techniques that she learned from indigenous communities in the mountains of Mondulkiri, eastern Cambodia. Limhay Chhum will present illustrations imagining the future of Phnom Penh and Nina Clayton will show a painting decked in plastics that were all collected in the sea off the Cambodian coast.
Painting and assemblage ‘Ocean Cry’ by Kep-based Nina Clayton

Jeronimo explained that he wanted the exhibition to have a wide variety of artistic mediums, even vehicles: “For instance, this artist from Battambang called Touch made a motorbike that she uses every day. She made a huge sidecar with a lot of plants… because she felt the need to always be surrounded by plants. So I was curious about this relationship with nature. And in the sidecar there’s a little chair that she uses to pick up her daughter form school. So it’s almost like a jungle queen surrounded by plants,” he said.

Jeronimo described how plastic waste clogs the draining system during the rainy season and causes floods. He hopes the visibility of this growing problem will create more awareness among Cambodians of the issue of plastic waste in the city, as well as of the plastic thrown away on beaches and in the jungle.
Full article: http://sea-globe.com/plastic-kingdom-ar ... e-problem/
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

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Siem Reap, Cambodia News: In Siem Reap, artists have fabricated a giant traditional Cambodian chapei out of plastic water bottles. During the water festival, the object was towed through the streets of Siem Reap on an ox cart to draw the public's attention to the problem of plastic waste.
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Anchor Moy
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

Post by Anchor Moy »


How to say no to plastic ? It' s hard to fight off all the plastic bags that go with everything in Cambodia. I "recycle" the bigger plastic bags as rubbish bags, but I agree that that's a bit pathetic. It's going to end up in landfill or burnt anyway. :whip:
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

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How Cambodia Could Win a War on Plastics
There are some basic steps that could go a long way in helping the country address a serious issue.
By David Hutt
February 23, 2019
Cambodia faces a monumental plastic problem, which is a subset of a problem with recycling in general. By one estimate, from 2015, urban-living Cambodians each use about 2,000 plastic bags annually, 10 times more than Europeans or Chinese, while 10 million plastic bags are used just in Phnom Penh alone each day. A recent photo-essay depicts the literal and figurative mess.

What the government has done, so far, is paltry at best and indifferent at worst. Following the example of other countries, a regulation passed by the Ministry of Environment last year means that customers now have to pay $0.10 for a bag. But this is only really applied in a handful of expensive supermarkets, where most people don’t shop at.

Recycling – at least collection – is currently monetized in Cambodia, but not at every stage. Come nightfall, hundreds of ragged, rubbish collectors, pulling wagons, roam the streets looking for trash to sell for recycling in what amounts to a mini-economy, though a heavily unregulated and unfair one. Many collectors are homeless and the poorest in society. Rare is one with any decent safety equipment, a concern given they are riffling around in trash barehanded. Children, accompanying their parents, work throughout the night.

Twenty kilograms of plastic bottles are sold for about $1.50, I am told, while the same weight of metals like soda cans and canned tins more profitable. A kilogram of tin goes for about $0.50 and a kilo of copper for roughly $3. But most collectors cannot expect to receive more than a few dollars for a whole night’s work, the only real source of income available to them.

Cambodia’s official unemployment rate (just 0.2 percent) masks the fact that much of the economy depends on “grey-market” labor such as this. Even the middlemen who buy the waste from the collectors, and in turn sell it to large processing firms in Vietnam or Thailand, don’t receive much more from their ventures. One new recycling venture in Battambang, for example, buys a kilo of plastic bags from rubbish collectors for $0.12 and sells them to traders in Thailand and Vietnam for $0.25 a kilo. Though that venture, a non-profit, has rightly received its fair share of applause, even its owner noted that he is “running a small-scale operation” and cannot deal with the problem single-handedly.

There are some obvious solutions. The government could simply create a new recycling department, employ the current scavengers for a decent salary and put some money into building recycling plants in Cambodia, meaning that valuable waste isn’t shipped abroad and profits stay at home.
Full article: https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/how-cam ... -plastics/
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pczz
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

Post by pczz »

Duncan wrote: Fri Jun 08, 2018 7:14 am I think the plastic bag problem has already been solved by putting a 500 r charge on plastic bags at supermarkets.
Now if only the same solution was used for land grabbing, deforestation, sand exports and bad Chinese drivers.
You go to the wrong supermarkets. I still get mine free. doesnt save plastic anywy. you just have to pay for your bin bags instead of getting them free, and making you pay for them does not magically reduce the amount of rubbish you throw out.

BAN ALL SINGLE USE PLASTICS - CONDOMS ARE BAD! :evil:
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

Post by chiltern »

pczz wrote: Mon Feb 25, 2019 12:00 pm
Duncan wrote: Fri Jun 08, 2018 7:14 am I think the plastic bag problem has already been solved by putting a 500 r charge on plastic bags at supermarkets.
Now if only the same solution was used for land grabbing, deforestation, sand exports and bad Chinese drivers.
You go to the wrong supermarkets. I still get mine free. doesnt save plastic anywy. you just have to pay for your bin bags instead of getting them free, and making you pay for them does not magically reduce the amount of rubbish you throw out.

BAN ALL SINGLE USE PLASTICS - CONDOMS ARE BAD! :evil:
Most condoms are made from latex (rubber) which is a natural biodegradable substance
pczz
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Re: Cambodia's plastic problem

Post by pczz »

chiltern wrote: Mon Feb 25, 2019 4:30 pm
pczz wrote: Mon Feb 25, 2019 12:00 pm
Duncan wrote: Fri Jun 08, 2018 7:14 am I think the plastic bag problem has already been solved by putting a 500 r charge on plastic bags at supermarkets.
Now if only the same solution was used for land grabbing, deforestation, sand exports and bad Chinese drivers.
You go to the wrong supermarkets. I still get mine free. doesnt save plastic anywy. you just have to pay for your bin bags instead of getting them free, and making you pay for them does not magically reduce the amount of rubbish you throw out.

BAN ALL SINGLE USE PLASTICS - CONDOMS ARE BAD! :evil:
Most condoms are made from latex (rubber) which is a natural biodegradable substance
I suggest you examine the packaging next time. That is usually a nice platic and foil bit of prettyness which is neither natural nor biodegradable as far as I know.
Not all condoms are latex,
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