Why bottles become ocean plastic - and not a new product
Here 3 obvious structural barriers:
1. SE Asia's public sector is part of the problem in two ways: waste management consists of collection and transport to open dump - not in treatment or recycling, while potable water comes in PET bottles.
2. Recovery is informal, done by doorstep collectors, waste truck crews, landfill scavengers and a few companies with little automation. But that's not enough. In Thailand for example it would need 60,000 collectors to recover say 90 million pet bottles or 1,500 each per day, for the minimum salary of 300 USD per month.
3. At the same time the commercial recyclers amongst our clients pay high premiums to overseas suppliers of used pet bottles to satisfy the demand of their domestic customers, because they can't find adequate supply at home.
CONCLUSIONS
1. Technical solutions are available.
2. We need projects for industrial scale recovery and processing of plastic waste to feed domestic recycling industry, to replace imports and local pollution
3. CBE is happy to support any initiative or investment
#CBE Thailand Co., Ltd., German Consulting Engineers, in Bangkok since 2002, making waste projects, feasible, profitable and clean. cbethai.com
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