Starting from January 1, about 25,000 points of sale, including supermarkets and department stores, have stopped providing single-use plastic bags to consumers. In many supermarkets in Bangkok, some shoppers place the purchased goods in their bags. The others will buy reusable bags such as cloth bags, non-woven cloth bags and paper bags.
There are four types of goods merchants can currently use single-use plastic bags to hold:
Food after heating in a microwave oven;
Wet food with juice, canned food and sticky food;
Meat, seafood;
Fruit and vegetable;
Thailand consumes about 45 billion plastic bags each year. Of which 40%, about 18 billion plastic bags come from traditional markets or street vendors and 30%, about 13.5 billion come from retailers. And 30% from supermarkets and department stores . Take the city of Bangkok as an example. The Bangkok municipal government clears and transports up to 80 million plastic bags every day. The population of the citizens is about 10 million. The average person uses up to 8 plastic bags per day. Therefore, marine pollution caused by plastic waste has become a serious problem in Thailand.
The purpose of the plastic restriction ban at this time is to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags by 30% per year, that is, 13.5 billion plastic bags. At the same time, the government also hopes to complete the goal of "all Thailand without plastic" by 2021.
