Over the Buddhist New Year weekend in Luang Prabang, Laos, hazardous air pollution blurred the Mekong’s sandy beaches and blotted out surrounding mountains. Red-eyed locals squinting from the haze hoped rain would cleanse the toxic air before Lao New Year festivities, but instead of water, only ash fell from the skies. 

The land surrounding the UNESCO World Heritage town was pockmarked with burn scars. Traditional agriculture techniques in Laos depend on seasonal burnings, which are often blamed for the air pollution.

“We spent a few days locked up in our hotel room because it was impossible to breathe outside. It was awful,” said Fenya Elzenhar, a German tourist. “We came here to enjoy nature, but we couldn’t even see the trees in front of us because of the haze.”

Smog in Southeast Asia is becoming a graver threat to nations across the region, with Laos and several Mekong neighbours attempting to take the first steps in tackling the issue.

Laos farmers, driven by a particularly hard period for their national economy, sparked an exceptionally long burning season this year, torching fallow fields and forests in a bid to eke out more crops. But by late March and early April, the Air Quality Index (AQI) website IQ Air reported hazardous air pollution levels across Laos, sparking an outcry among residents and experts. The 500+ AQI soon became a major threat to public health and tourism, particularly the high levels of PM2.5 dust.

The orange haze that engulfed Luang Prabang forced locals to hide at home, tourists to cancel travel plans and business owners to find alternative sources of revenue. Concerns are growing about the long-term effects seasonal smog could have on Luang Prabang, the most popular tourist destination in Laos.

Hazy days in Luang Prabang

Benny Kong Chong Jee sipped his cold brew as flecks of ash layered the floor outside the restaurant cafe in Luang Prabang, where he has lived for the past 17 years. Until recently, his family lived with him. But that changed with the haze.

As the burning season began earlier than usual in February, Kong decided to move his family back to their home country.

“This issue caused me lots of sleepless nights,” he said. “It was a very hard choice, but we didn’t want the haze to have a negative impact on our children’s health.”

During the worst of the smog in March and April, Kong noted the profound impact the air pollution was having on the two hotels and tourism agencies he manages in town. 

Besides the loss of business from booking cancellations, the town’s tourism industry also missed income from the unknowable number of tourists who decided against visiting Laos in the first place because of the air pollution, Kong explained. Additionally, as the haze got worse, the tourists who had made it to Luang Prabang tended to stay in their hotel rooms, rather than explore the city and contribute to the local economy. 

Since burning began, Kong has decided to slow down his marketing strategy to prevent the customers from having a negative experience that might tarnish Laos’s reputation as a travel destination. Still, he empathised with the farmers whose burning had clouded the air.

“People are finding it harder to survive now, with high inflation and higher costs of living,” he said. “If they don’t burn the fields and start growing new crops today, they won’t have enough income to survive.”

Slash-and-burn agriculture, the traditional farming method of burning vegetation to create a nutrient-rich layer of soil, is typical in Laos. Air quality often declines in March as locals normally burn their fields to prepare for the new agricultural season. But what made the hazardous haze exceptional this year was that farmers began burning in early February and continued through late April.

The pandemic and the subsequent high inflation of Laos’ kip are likely compounding the pressures on farming communities within the country, which is regularly ranked to have the lowest GDP among ASEAN countries.

While acknowledging burning is vital for farmers, Phouthala Phouheuanghong, a 60-year-old farmer from XiengMen village across the Mekong River from Luang Prabang, believes the government should implement clear regulations to reduce the amount of forest being burned.

“Lots of people are already feeling unwell,” Phouthala said. “It wasn’t this bad before Covid, but now I worry that it will just get worse in the next few years.”

As the air thickened with pollution from the burning fields, residents found it increasingly hard to breathe. Those driving motorbikes to work in the haze, humidity and heat, often found themselves with red and teary eyes.

Laos isn’t the only country struggling to address air pollution concerns. Several Upper Mekong nations have suffered from equally severe burning seasons this year.

Air pollution across Northern Thailand, especially in cities such as Chiang Mai, reached such toxic levels this year that residents banded together to sue the Thai prime minister and other government bodies, demanding their “right to clean air.”

While health data in Laos is limited, just over the border in northern Thailand, the lung  cancer rate in 2022 was “the second most prevalent primary cancer behind liver and bile duct cancer,” as the region has been one of the most polluted globally, Bangkok Post reported. 

Neighbouring countries often point fingers when it comes to the issue of transboundary haze, but a new cooperative agreement between Myanmar, Thailand and Laos may take steps to address that. In early April, leaders from the three nations met to discuss transboundary air pollution and agreed to reduce slash-and-burn in border regions, as well as to tackle waste burning and provide modern methods for proper disposal.

In Laos, smog has affected all 11 of the country’s districts, according to a Luang Prabang District official who requested not to be named for security reasons. 

“This year, the smog is much worse than in the past because people need to burn more fields for agricultural purposes,” the official said. “But we know this air is like poison for every life, including both animals and humans.” 

Additional reporting by a veteran Lao freelance journalist, who requested not to be named because of livelihood and safety concerns.

This story was produced in collaboration with The Mekong Eye and supported by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

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“I felt ashamed on behalf of these waste throwers,” Samphors said of Cambodian citizens who routinely litter by the road.

“I asked people in my community why they throw out their trash without organising it,” Samphors said. “They told me it was because there is no waste landfill, and no waste collection service like in the city.”

When he discovered his community had limited options, he started to get to work.

In low income areas around the country where waste collection services are few, trash is often burned in the open. Due to population growth, plastic waste has increased dramatically in Cambodia over the past 25 years, creating a daunting waste management challenge.

According to the Ministry of Environment, Cambodia produces more than 10,000 tons of garbage per day, and more than 4 million tons per year. Over 10 million plastic bags are also used daily in Phnom Penh. Daily output of trash is expected to rise in the coming years to 3,112 tons (2823.15 metric tonnes) per day by 2030. Some estimates say trash output will triple by 2040.

Waste management in Cambodia falls under the responsibility of provincial authorities, as described in a 1999 government sub-decree that directs provincial authorities to oversee activities such as collecting, transporting and dumping waste. 

However, a 2019 report published by a German development agency, known as GIZ, stated “some local authorities are still unaware of all of their duties and struggle to fulfil their role in waste management.”

This has contributed to waste problems in many parts of the country, but it has also created an opportunity for entrepreneurs like Samphors, who launched his startup, Samlod Ratanakphal, in 2020.

“People are happy to use our service because we provide them regular waste pick up every day, and we also encourage them to divide waste,” Samphors said.

His efforts to address waste in remote areas caught the attention of Impact Hub Phnom Penh, an organisation that funds and supports entrepreneurs with their business start-up projects.

After seeing a huge amount of waste in his home community in Samlod, Samphors and his small team started collecting rubbish from residents every day across six communes, and opened a landfill on his own property in Battambang province. 

“Here we have no garbage landfill, so we create a land plot to reduce the waste issues in our community, and make it into a place that people understand and know how to keep waste in good manners,” Samphors said. “We collect 4 to 5 tons (3.6 to 4.5 metric tonnes) of rubbish every day.” 

Cambodia has been gradually trying to handle its garbage problem, according to Environment Ministry Spokesman Neth Pheaktra.

“The waste issue is not only for Cambodia, it is the world issue,” Pheaktra said.

“I can say that people have started to understand the waste issues, and change their behaviour after many awareness campaigns,” Pheaktra said.

Pheaktra added that the government has established new waste management policies in order to rectify the country’s waste issues. Some include banning the import, production, and distribution of plastic bags that are thinner than 0.03 mm, and  increasing tax on plastic bags.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment is cooperating on a new project in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with support from the Japanese embassy focused on solving waste management in Cambodia.

Although the government has taken minor steps such as providing more dumpsters and trash trucks throughout the country, critics like Samphors say it’s not enough. 

Besides its own rubbish, Cambodia received at least 83 shipping containers of garbage in 2019, including 70 containers from the United States and 13 from Canada, Peaktra, told The Guardian in 2019.

Pich Pisethneat, head of impact incubation at Impact Hub Phnom Penh, said Samphors’ organisation, Samlod Ratanakphal, is doing important work.

“We believe they will continue doing great things in the future,” Pisethneat said. “The reason why we…support the team is because of this dedication and their future plan in recycling.” 

While providing waste management to more than 300 families, Samlod Ratanakphal has expanded its business model to recycle biological waste. The company also transforms biodegradable items, such as kitchen waste, into natural compost for farms.

Despite progress, Samphors worries about the limitations of his landfill, with waste levels rising daily. But he hopes to continue buying land and expanding the business to manage the waste that continues to pile up.

“I want to see my community in Samlod, and residents here to know how to keep wastes in order and separate it in good manners,” Samphors said.  “I want to make the Samlod community a clean and beautiful community.”

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The Thai navy is scrambling to clean up Tuesday night’s spill from a pipeline that leaked at least 60 tonnes of crude oil 20 kilometres (12 miles) off the coast of Rayong province.

Authorities have declared Mae Ram Phueng Beach a disaster zone and closed it to swimmers as crews in yellow plastic protective suits begin the clean-up.

Rayong resorts and seafood restaurants say the spill is a “nail in the coffin” for their businesses after the tourism industry’s continued pandemic downturn.

For long-time fishermen who have been asked to halt their catches for at least a month in exchange for emergency payments, there is a feeling of deja vu.

They recall the long road to environmental and economic recovery after another pipeline leak in the same area in 2013.

Initial compensation for that accident was around $900, but fisherman Tuem 46, says it is no substitute for regular work.

“I don’t want compensation. I want a healthy sea that I can work in for my livelihood,” he told AFP.

“The sea can give us money every day. The sea was good in the past few years. I do not know how many years before it becomes good again.”

– Five-year recovery –

Tuem usually makes around $30 a day from a 7-10 kilogram (15-22 pound) haul but he says now he will struggle to cover the cost of petrol to retrieve his fishing nets.

“The impact is immediate and clear. I do not know what to do,” he said.

AFP joined a group of fisherman on a boat trip Sunday — their fishing haul amounted to about 10 percent of their usual catch and many fish were dead.

Burapha University marine scientist Thanomsak Boonphakdee, who was taking water samples at the beach over the weekend, says it will take a long time to fully assess environmental damage from the disaster.

The marine life took at least five years to recover from the 2013 incident, he said.

“Crabs, small fish and shrimp are the (creatures) that will be affected most,” he told AFP.

A dozen ships are spraying dispersant chemicals and so far more than 80,000 litres (21,000 US gallons) has been doused over the affected area.

Star Petroleum Refining Public Company Limited, the operator of the pipeline and whose major shareholder is US giant Chevron, said it was trying to minimise the slick’s ecological impact using booms.

But satellite imagery shows the slick had already spread to an area of 51 square kilometres (20 square miles) on Sunday, local media reported.

There are also fears a national park on the island of Ko Samet will be affected and Thai authorities Sunday deployed absorbent material to Ao Prao beach as a precaution.

– Transparency calls –

Natural Resources and Environment Minister Varawut Silpa-archa urged oil companies in Thailand to ramp up prevention measures and boost inspections and maintenance programs on land and sea.

“I do not want this kind of accident to happen again. The expense of spending money to solve a major disaster after it happened, can not compare with companies increasing the inspections,” he told reporters in Rayong.

Greenpeace, which has called on the Thai government to set up an independent investigation into the spill, said incidents are becoming far too common.

Between 1974 and present day there have been 240 oil spill incidents in Thailand, the environmental group said.

“The oil spill will affect marine life and could be fatal for fish, shrimps, shellfish,” Greenpeace warned. 

Another fisherwoman, Nid, 62, lamented it was heartbreaking to see another disaster after seeing the area’s recovery in recent years.

“We are just small insects who have no voice to be heard,” she told AFP.

© Agence France-Presse

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The kingdom’s Pollution Control Department has warned that the spill in the Gulf of Thailand, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) off the coast of Rayong province, could threaten a national park in nearby Ko Samet island.

Weak currents have kept the oil away from coastal areas and there has been no reported impact on marine life or seafood farming, officials said.

Star Petroleum Refining Public Company Limited, which operates the pipeline, said the spill volume was between 20 and 50 tonnes — around 22,000 to 60,000 litres.

The company said divers had found a failure in a flexible hose that formed part of the undersea equipment around a single point mooring — a floating buoy used to offload oil from tankers.

The Pollution Control Department and other experts are assessing what type of dispersants to use on the spill, officials said at a joint news conference with the navy and other agencies.

A pipeline leak in the same area in 2013 led to a major slick that coated a beach on Ko Samet, leaving recovery workers in protective suits to clear up the blackened sand.

© Agence France-Presse

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The capital and its surroundings form a megacity of about 30 million people, which routinely ranks among the most polluted cities in the world.

Experts have warned for years about the threat posed by Jakarta’s smog to the health of residents, especially children.

A group of 32 activists and citizens impacted by pollution had filed the lawsuit two years ago, accusing Widodo, as well as his ministers for health, home and environment, and the governor of Jakarta, of negligence over the state of the city’s environment.

The officials were found to have “violated the law”, presiding judge Saifuddin Zuhri of the Central Jakarta District Court said, ordering them to tighten environmental regulations and enforcement.

They asked the officials to especially crack down on the pollution generated by vehicles and the coal-fired power plants around Jakarta, including with sanctions for violations.

The judges also told authorities to improve air monitoring systems and make pollution data public.

The petitioners had not asked the court for any monetary compensation.

Ayu Eza Tiara, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that the defendants must accept their “defeat” and comply with the ruling.

There was no immediate response from Widodo or the other officials found negligent by the court. 

Outdoor air pollution causes an estimated 4.2 million premature deaths around the world, hitting poor and middle-income countries such as Indonesia hardest, according to the World Health Organization.

Indonesian activists say standards have improved in recent years, but are far from what is needed. They have also warned that smog can make the effects of Covid-19 worse, in addition to aggravating asthma and other respiratory problems.

Jakarta residents got some respite when pandemic restrictions reduced traffic, but air pollution has slowly returned.

Air pollution is one of several environmental issues facing the Indonesian capital.

It is also one of the world’s fastest-sinking cities because of excessive groundwater extraction.

The government in 2019 announced plans to move the administrative capital of the country to a new location on Borneo island to reduce stress on Jakarta.

© Agence France-Presse

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It has the makings of a beautiful spot, but Nithi-Uthai isn’t there to take in the view. He and some dedicated friends go to pick up trash, endless loads of it heaped on the banks. The group first selected this site in 2016 for its natural beauty and immediately set out to remove a mound of garbage dumped there by local restaurants.

“We actually took three months to get rid of that. It was full of maggots and everything. It was real trash, not ocean trash. You cry because it’s too much,” Nithi-Uthai told the Globe. “The point when you clean maggots out of a mountain of trash, something happens inside of you.”

Instead of dwelling on the horrible smell, he thought that someone might pay him, if he could just create a valuable product out of all the freely available trash in town.

The breakthrough came after he and a team at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani (PSU) created sandals from upcycled flip-flops collected at the beach. They used those sandals to launch Tlejourn in 2015, a startup now turning the waste problem into profit.

Now Tlejourn is not only making profits but inspiring other companies – from young Thai fashion designers to large corporations – to also try and use waste as a raw material. 

In the process, the startup is helping to prove the concept of the so-called circular economy, one that prioritises a more intensive use of recycled materials over new raw materials. A production cycle that uses waste, rather than creating new garbage, might help solve the garbage problem currently destroying Thailand’s ecosystems.

“It’s new, the idea that when you finish using all types of products, you should think of the producer when you want to discard it. We can recycle it,” said Nithi-Uthai.

According to a 2019 government report, Thailand generated 27.8 million tonnes of solid garbage that year, about the weight of 15 million cars. Offshore, some 2 trillion pieces of plastic trash float in Thai waters, with Thai activists still struggling to ban waste imports from other countries like China and the US.

Waste as a free resource was the idea has guided Tlejourn from the start, when in 2015 Nithi-Uthai and a group of students shredded thousands of beached flip-flops, mixed the resulting bits of foamed plastic together with a glue-like polyurethane liquid and then squeezed the goop in a mechanical press to form brand-new flip-flops. After students posted pictures on social media, strangers began calling asking how they could buy a pair.

“Right after that we established our operation and took crowdfunding orders – about 100 pairs of flip-flops [in total],” said Nithi-Uthai.

Since then Tlejourn has grown, without any outside funding, from a student project into a small, legally registered company. In documents shared with the Globe, Tlejourn earned about $37,800, or 1.18 million baht, in revenue for 2020. That’s a significant sum for Pattani, one of Thailand’s poorest provinces where in 2018 an estimated 39% of the population survived on less than 1,586 baht ($50.84) per month.  

While Tlejourn doesn’t strive to be a Silicon Valley star, the young firm doesn’t want to be lumped in with non-profits who collect trash out of a sense of civic duty. Nithi-Uthai believes that if more companies would use trash as a raw material, less would be dumped into the ocean or landfills.

“I always have in mind, these things need to be turned into a product. Someone needs to pay me to turn this into a product,” he said.

As questions of sustainability begin to more seriously shape economic growth, circular economy advocates such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a UK-based charity, recommend making using waste cheaper and natural resources more expensive through taxation.

Such a policy could, if enacted in a place like Thailand, make it more expensive to simply throw things away, all the while encouraging the use of recycled materials. If residents had to pay a tax to throw old shoes in the garbage, they’d have a financial incentive to look for companies like Tlejourn who could take them for free, turn them back into useful products and save them from a landfill or washing into the sea.

Such an anti-waste policy doesn’t yet exist, but Tlejourn isn’t hurting for lack of trash. Padinya Aree is Tlejourn’s point man when it comes to collecting trash and has been with the project since the beginning. Civic trash pick up groups began calling him, as word of Tlejourn’s model has spread.

“If people send their trash to me, I welcome that,” Aree said. “But the ultimate dream of Tlejourn is that one day Tlejourn comes to an end, because there’s no more trash to make products from.

For now, the company’s business model is simple; Tlejourn’s four full-time employees collect and sort non-organic trash, working in cooperation with PSU, to store the waste and upcycle it into new shoe pads and soles. An all-female team in a nearby village works on a per-piece basis to glue shoe elements together and package new footwear in cloth bags for shipment. 

Nithi-Uthai has referred to Tlejourn’s pricing system as an intentionally “zero-profit” model. The retail price a customer pays is split into thirds. One-third pays for admin and the recycling process, another third goes to the women’s group and the last is kept by the seller.

Nithi-Uthai purposely constructed a business model that makes an immediate positive financial impact for the village women’s group, many of whom wouldn’t have a job without Tlejourn. They can earn about $8 per day, approximately 15% of an average monthly income in Pattani Province.

“We [Tlejourn] only get one-third of the revenue but that’s enough,” Nithi-Uthai said, distancing himself from entrepreneurs who promise to help society after they get rich.

“Too many people are doing that, and if it worked then someone very rich would have solved all the problems already.” 

Tlejourn is inspiring other Asian companies to try and make money from waste. In 2019 they assisted Thai footwear giant, Nanyang, to produce that company’s first-ever limited-run flip-flop made from waste. Under a new brand name “KHYA” (garbage in Thai), Nanyang sold 27,886 pair of sandals at 399 baht ($12.79) a pair. 

The experiment wasn’t sustainable due to the costs involved in launching the new brand, as well as retooling needed at Nanyang’s production lines. Nevertheless, Nanyang had originally only planned for a run of 1,000 to 2,000 sandals, so the strong demand proved to management that Thais are willing to purchase cleverly designed goods, even those made from trash. 

Piya Sosothikul, a member of Nanyang’s board of directors, estimated in 2019 the company could reach profitability at a mass production run of 100,000 pairs at a price of $19.23 (an even 600 baht) a pair. Last year, Nanyang created a tote bag for dealers made from the company’s old vinyl advertising and is rumored to be crafting their first shoe made from recycled materials in an attempt to keep up with Nike and Adidas who already do. 

If people send their trash to me, I welcome that. But the ultimate dream of Tlejourn is that one day Tlejourn comes to an end, because there’s no more trash to make products from

Nithi-Uthai and his team have also cooperated on one-off footwear projects with a number of brands in Asia, such as MUZINA, CC-OO, SODA and SRETSIS, as well as the paddleboarding company Starboard. The Tlejourn team used the Covid-19 disruption to design a new, active model sandal with velcro straps over the ankles and toes.

Beyond footwear, Tlejourn’s team is always tinkering, trying out new products and hoping for a spark of interest from the public. They’ve tried turning a stack of old cigarette lighters into new flooring, crushed bottles into coloured sand as an art supply, and even produced a Tlejourn skateboard. 

Most recently, Tlejourn produced countertops for a new retail store in Bangkok run by the Swiss company FREITAG. FREITAG’s own products are upcycled from PVC collected from transport trucks in Europe. In keeping with that theme, Tlejourn’s team made countertops from shredded truck tires.

On an April evening, as Nithi-Uthai prepared to grill a steak on his homemade grill – itself made from old bottle caps, upcycled tires and recovered wood – he thought about the Pattani River vantage point.

“It’s become our teaching and learning place,” he said, referring to the scores of students and Pattani citizens who come usually just once or twice to pick up garbage. 

Five years after Nithi-Uthai and his friends started picking up trash, their vantage point on the river has been improved. But they still come because new garbage – used tubes of Colgate toothpaste, empty Fanta bottles, single-use shampoo containers and countless straws – is constantly floating down the river, lodging in the muddy sand. 

But big garbage problems require solutions that can scale, something that a volunteer network can’t always do. Nithi-Uthai believes Tlejourn makes its greatest impact by drawing awareness to the Thai trash problem and by pointing to the circular economy as a solution. 

The country can’t be cleaned up simply by bagging garbage alone, he says. Not even the lookout point can be cleaned this way.

“I don’t think with like 10 people every day even in our lifetime we will be able to finish [cleaning lookout point], you know. I don’t think so.”

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It’s all in a day’s work for the volunteers and team at Seven Clean Seas, a Singapore-based social enterprise on a mission to rid the world’s oceans from plastic pollution. Despite the city-state’s reputation as being one of the cleanest cities in the world, not many realise it’s a hotspot for trash accumulation by virtue of the fact that it is surrounded by the world’s worst plastic polluting countries, said the organisation’s co-founder Tom Peacock-Nazil. 

The government makes an effort to clean up tourist beaches, but non-tourist beaches don’t get the same attention, he told the Globe.

“Everyone knows Singapore is a clean city, so they assume that the beaches are as well. But when you take people to places that we know are dirty, they are shocked,” he said. 

Among the first-time volunteers that day was homemaker Zaliha Rashid and her family. She had seen the call for volunteers on Facebook but almost did not go, until her daughter convinced them to join.

“I’ve watched documentaries about plastic waste and it’s something our teachers tell us in school, but it’s still sad to see so much waste here,” her 11-year-old daughter Nadia Zahra said. Inspired to do something similar at her own school, she added: “I know I’m very young, but still can make a difference with my actions.”

The organisation was first conceived during a vacation with his wife on the Thai island Koh Lipe, famous for its white sand beaches and turquoise waters, said Peacock-Nazil. Overnight, a storm washed up mounds of garbage, turning the pristine beach into a plastic nightmare.

Seeing the amount of pollution shocked the 32-year-old into action. Returning to Singapore, the Briton left his cushy finance job to found Seven Clean Seas in June 2018, together with co-founder Ben Moody, a biological sciences graduate.

In the early days, it drew some 30 volunteers, but that movement “exploded” he said. All of a sudden, companies were looking to engage them for corporate social responsibility efforts, such as to organise beach clean ups and host educational talks and workshops. On average, they would get 200 volunteers, with the biggest turnout being 650 people.

About half of all of the plastic waste that ends up in the world’s oceans comes from just five countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, according to a 2017 report from environment group Ocean Conservancy. 

In June last year, at the 34th Asean Summit in Bangkok, Southeast Asian nations adopted a pact to cut marine waste, a move welcomed by Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The problem of waste washing up on its shores hits Singapore at different times of the year. Strong winds during the Southwest monsoon pushes huge quantities of unsightly flotsam onto the East Coast Park. Conversely, during the Northeast monsoon, everything in the Johor Straits lands up on Singapore’s northern shores, making it a never-ending battle to remove the waste.

In its time, the group has found a hodgepodge of plastic waste on the beach – ranging from the mundane to the bizarre. Flip flops, plastic aeroplanes, Barbie dolls, toys, motorcycle helmets, sofas. On four or five occasions, volunteers undertook the laborious and painful task of removing spiky horseshoe crabs found entangled in plastic cast nets.

The pandemic put monthly clean-ups on hiatus, but activities have since resumed.

In November, Seven Clean Seas took part in its first-ever Boaters Against Plastic event targeting the remote southern islands of Singapore. Over 100 volunteers were mobilised, travelling out via 21 boats and four jet skis.

Still, the biggest challenge is that countries have differing priorities and resources for waste management, resulting in “dead spots” with huge volumes of plastic pollution, said Peacock-Nazil.

Sam Shu Qin, a marine biologist and the co-founder of Our Singapore Reefs, a group which organises dive clean-ups around Singapore’s southern waters, said it is hard to pinpoint where exactly the plastic trash comes from. It could have come from passing ships or swept by currents from neighbouring countries.

Singaporeans sometimes fail to understand we are a huge import country as well. We can’t always blame others, but we can do our part

Since 2014, plastic has made up 67% of 8362 marine debris items they’ve collected, according to data provided by Our Singapore Reefs. The top items are 1.5 litre water bottles and food wrappers.

But while many cast accusatory glances towards the city-state’s neighbours, Shu Qin also points to Singapore’s huge appetite for plastic.

“When people pick up the trash, they see the labels which are unfamiliar. People always say it’s not our [trash], it’s theirs,” she told the Globe. “But Singaporeans sometimes fail to understand we are a huge import country as well. We can’t always blame others, but we can do our part.”

The two-man team have since expanded their work into the Southeast Asia region. After Singapore, they spearheaded big beach clean-ups in Johor and Selangor in Malaysia. 

Lined up next is another ambitious project in Bintan, Indonesia, where the team will build a waste-management facility by the end of 2021. The area was chosen for its remote island location with a thriving marine environment in need of protection. Remote Island locations tend to have the biggest problem with waste management due to a lack of infrastructure, he explained.

The goal is to collect 500 tonnes of environmental, household and industrial plastic waste in the first year of operations, then taken to the facility to be sorted and recycled. It also hopes to improve access to such services for remote communities like Orang Laut (sea people) of the outlying Riau islands in western Indonesia.

Peacock-Nazil said creating the infrastructure needed to aggregate, segregate and sell plastic waste through this waste-management facility gives plastic value. “When it has a value, people do not let it enter the environment. You create economic and environmental impact at the same time.”

A further issue targeted by the group is that the majority of the world’s plastic waste is first carried from inland rivers before it reaches the oceans. To combat this, Seven Clean Seas developed an innovative low-cost, high-volume river clean-up technology. 

By next year, the team will have its first prototype permanently installed at a river canal south of Hanoi, Vietnam. Shaped like a “floating wedge”, any plastic waste will bump into the boom, slide into the system and a conveyor belt will convey it into waste containers. Each unit holds a 1,460,000kg capacity per annum, and will prevent huge quantities of plastic reaching the ocean. 

To date, Seven Clean Seas has recovered 80,000kg of trash – barely 10% of its ambitious plan to recover 10 million kg of plastic by 2025.

Despite Singapore being a small nation, it is a “big economic player” with the potential to be a positive ecological influence in the region, said Peacock-Nazil. 

“It represents a real opportunity for Singapore to be a leader in waste management, recycling tech and to export that expertise to its neighbours,” he said.

As Singapore embarks on its first Zero-Waste Masterplan, some members of parliament  have argued that more can be done to stamp out overconsumption of single-use plastic in Singapore. For now, Seven Clean Seas volunteers like Ivan Ker are quietly doing their bit for the environment as they comb through the city-state’s lesser-seen beaches.

“We’ve seen first-hand how bad the situation has become in the oceans. It’s only fair that we right the wrongs that humans have done to the environment.”

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It’s a more expensive and labour intensive method of harvesting the crop, but one that is growing out of necessity among sugarcane farmers as the Thai government strives to improve its air quality. 

Sugarcane has long been a key commodity for sugar production in Thailand. But in recent years, it has been increasingly promoted as a potential cornerstone for Thailand’s growing bioeconomy, as the kingdom attempts to substantially grow the business of turning biological material into value-added products. 

Historically, a less laborious sugarcane harvesting practice of open burning was more common. A sugarcane field is burnt to wilt away the tops and leaves, leaving only the charred sugarcane stalk for ease of cutting and transportation to factories. But as the sugar production starts churning and the fields are burned from December to February each year, the air quality worsens significantly as northern Thailand enters its annual ‘burning season’. 

Garn, a sugarcane harvester in northeast Thailand’s Udonthani province, near the Laos border, is just one of many farmers that still uses this burning method during harvesting season.

“No one wants to burn sugarcane,” Garn said. “But it’s the only option we have sometimes.”

In response to air quality routinely dipping below healthy standards, in June 2019 the Thai government issued regulations in an attempt to reduce sugarcane burning within a three-year timeline. This would be done by setting a limit on the amount of burned sugarcane that millers can accept, as well as offering a higher price for fresh sugarcane, and in some provinces, penalising farmers for burning. 

But despite government efforts, the long-held practice of burning sugarcane persists as Thai farmers struggle with high production costs and fluctuating year-to-year income amidst declining global sugar prices. Ultimately, fiscal pressures on Thai farmers like Garn traps Thailand in a cycle of crop burning and, in turn, poor air quality. 

“The sugarcane farmers have been trying to comply with the government regulations, but sometimes it is above the farmers’ capabilities,” said Paiboon Thithisak, president of the Northeastern Sugarcane Planters Association. “In recent years there have been regulations about the proportion of burnt sugarcane allowed – the pressure is high, sometimes beyond what farmers can handle.”

For many, the crop is one of Thailand’s most important agricultural products and receives unwavering state support. But the industry is one featuring lopsided development and investment, with small-scale farmers usually the ones who suffer at the hands of well-intentioned but flawed government regulation. What’s more, sugarcane farmers remain largely excluded from the greater revenues being found among factories and millers, as the government pushes forward with a bioeconomy vision of electricity and ethanol production powered by sugarcane byproducts.

“Sugarcane burning can be an indicator of inequality,” said May Thazin Aung, a research fellow at a sustainable development group, the Stockholm Environment Institute. “If the system was more equitable, then people wouldn’t be sidelined by considerations such as labour costs, there would be a greater investment into machinery and mechanisation to avoid the field burning that causes environmental pollution.”

In Thailand, sugar pumps through the veins of the country. 

The kingdom is the world’s fourth-largest sugar producer and second-largest exporter. As of 2018, Thailand has over 380,000 farmers and 11.5 million rai (4.5 million acres) of plantations dedicated to sugarcane. 

In Udonthani, Thailand’s largest sugarcane growing province located in the northeast of the country, December to February is marked by sugarcane burning during the harvest season, leading to levels of particulate matter that far exceed the safe limit set by the World Health Organization. 

“During the sugarcane harvest season, the PM2.5 concentration level is two to three times higher in sugarcane cultivation areas, especially in January and February where pre-harvest burning takes place,” explained Agapol Junpen, a researcher at King Mongkut’s University of Technology in Bangkok. According to air quality measurement data gained from stations in northeastern Thailand, PM2.5 emissions during the sugarcane harvest season have increased continuously since 2007, more than doubling in the 13 years to 2020. 

Entering the second phase of the three-year plan, in November the Office of the Cane and Sugar Board (OCSB) tightened policies on burnt sugarcane in an effort to improve air quality. For the 2020-21 season, 80% of the sugar millers’ total purchases per day need to be fresh (unburnt) sugarcane, an increase of 20% from the 2019-20 season. Other price incentives to discourage burnt sugarcane include a 30 baht ($1) deduction per tonne of burnt sugarcane on the price paid by millers to farmers. 

But while incentives to change their practices abound for farmers, the fact remains that harvesting fresh sugarcane costs around three times as much as burning it. Posed like an algebra question on a high-school maths test, farmers have to calculate which method, burned or fresh, maximises profits. 

The answer to this equation is clear for most – continue burning sugarcane. 

“Even though the factory offers a slightly higher price for fresh cane, in terms of management, we save on labour and harvesting costs by burning sugarcane. We can also harvest more per day by burning,” explained farmer Jiraporn Sae Ngo, as she walked among sugarcane standing almost twice her height. Her sugarcane will soon be cut and processed in the sugar factory of Kumphawapi district in Udonthani. 

“Even with the price deduction, burning sugar cane is more cost-effective, we get more income,” she added. 

For others, the choice to burn sugarcane is not a calculation of profit maximisation, but simply a matter of survival. 

“This year we’ve been hit by a drought. If we don’t burn, we’ll go bust. The labour cost is high and we don’t have the machinery to cut the sugarcane – it’s expensive,” said Noi, a sugarcane farmer in Khonkaen. 

While machinery offers an attractive alternative to burning for many farmers, for those like Noi and Ganok, another sugarcane farmer in Udonthani, it remains too expensive for the amount of sugarcane they grow. 

“You would have to grow more than 10,000 tonnes of sugarcane for the machinery to be on the table for discussion as a viable investment,” said Ganok. “The factories should help us by buying machinery to help. The factory drops the load on the farmers [while] the sugar price is declining and labour cost is more expensive.” 

Nutthapol Asadathorn is managing director of Thai Roong Ruang Sugar Group, which bills itself as the oldest private sugar producer in Thailand. He explained that while investing in machinery is much more feasible for factories than for small-scale farmers, it still comes at a high price.

“Thailand is not like Brazil,” said Nutthapol. In Brazil, the world’s largest sugarcane producer, crops can spread over whole provinces. In Thailand, sugarcane plantations are often relatively small private-owned fields next to each other.

“A truck costs around 10 million baht if we import it, or 7 to 8 million baht if we buy one domestically. The utilisation rate needs to be high, but we only use it three to four months per year during harvest season,” he added. 

This combination of factors – the decline in global sugar prices, a lack of machinery and higher harvesting costs for fresh sugarcane – reduces the effectiveness of any government air quality regulations. The financial burden on farmers means many have no option but to burn sugarcane to stay afloat, making poor air quality a persistent issue. 

“The main barrier that the air pollution policy faces is the burden on the farmers to carry the increased costs of not burning sugarcane,” said Agapol. “If there is no financial assistance or machinery available for sugarcane farmers, the same pattern will repeat where the percentage of burned sugarcane increases gradually each year.”

This year the government is pushing for 100% fresh sugarcane and the sugarcane farmers have to adapt. Each year the flexibility of the government’s policies decreases

In the 2018-19 production year, burned sugarcane made up 61% (80 million tonnes) and fresh sugarcane made up 39% (51 million tonnes) of the total sugarcane purchased by sugar factories. Setting a 20% maximum for burned sugarcane is therefore a steep decline that necessitates a shift in harvesting methods, meaning farmers must adapt or see their business go under. 

The benefits of not burning sugarcane are evident to all – the higher sugar content value, better soil fertility, and air quality for surrounding communities. But for sugarcane farmers, the price gained from sugarcane is the paramount concern, explained Chartchai Chotisan, a sugarcane scientist and leader at the OCSB Cane and Sugar Promotion Center in Udonthani. Regardless of farmers concerns, however, room for negotiation on the issue is shrinking with each year that passes. 

“This year the government is pushing for 100% fresh sugarcane and the sugarcane farmers have to adapt. Each year the flexibility of the government’s policies decreases,” said Chartchai. 

In practice, as pressure increases, some farmers have stopped growing sugarcane altogether – meaning the smaller farmers have left and the large-scale farmers remain. 

“It’s similar to the process of natural selection,” Chartchai explained. 

But amidst this ruthless game of natural selection going on among Thailand’s sugarcane farmers, some sugarcane millers and sugar companies are adapting, and even thriving, as they expand their product range by making use of sugarcane byproducts. 

A mere 30-minute drive from Jiraporn’s plantation is a power plant generating electricity from the pulpy fibrous bagasse residue left over by sugar mills.  

Nutthapol pointed to these alternative uses for sugarcane, such as electricity and ethanol production, as a way that sugarcane millers have pivoted to maximise output from sugarcane amid growing financial pressures in recent years. 

Building out a bioeconomy is one of the Thai government’s top priority sectors. For Thailand, that means a specific focus on adding value and making derivative products out of commodities like sugarcane and cassava, which the kingdom is already producing in large quantities. Part of the aim of this bioeconomy vision, besides greater environmental sustainability, is to stabilise commodity prices for agricultural crops, while also gaining some level of energy independence.

Thailand’s Alternative Energy Development Plan (2015-2036) predicts that an additional $9.6 billion per year in economic value, as well as sugarcane-related jobs for 300,000 households, can be generated from sugarcane within ten years. 

But while the potential financial returns of a sugarcane bioeconomy are enormous, they won’t necessarily reach those most in need of the revenue, and those most central to improving Thailand’s air quality – the sugarcane farmers themselves. 

Currently, the 70:30 revenue sharing sugar scheme, established under the 1984 Cane and Sugar Act, distributes 70% of total sugar revenue made each year to farmers and the remaining 30% to millers. However, the revenue from other byproducts not related to sugar, such as ethanol and electricity, are not shared with sugarcane farmers. This leaves them with shrinking revenues from their core business, sugarcane sales, but cuts farmers off from the growing profits garnered from their crops associated with the bioeconomy. 

“Farmers don’t get the share from electricity production. We are trying to call for benefits, similar to the 70:30 scheme for farmers,” said Paiboon. 

To fix this, officials would need to heed the calls of organisations like Paiboon’s Northeastern Sugarcane Planters Association and revise the Cane and Sugar Act to include non-sugar sugarcane byproducts. If implemented, farmers would enjoy a consistent income stream, rendering them more financially stable and able to invest in infrastructure and labour costs that could see practices such as crop burning become less prevalent. 

“If farmers are able to get the benefit from the sugarcane bioeconomy, it will increase the [environmental and financial] sustainability of growing sugarcane by also receiving benefits from electricity or bioplastic production,” said Chartchai. “The sugarcane price has been dropping, so farmers want to have a share of the byproducts of sugar production that can help to increase their income.” 

But currently, as the Thai government promotes a vision of environmental sustainability through efforts to grow the bioeconomy and end sugarcane burning, the focus remains industrial-driven and leaves sugarcane farmers to carry much of the burden to follow along. 

From the perspective of the Stockholm Environment Institute’s May Thazin Aung, though the bioeconomy can drive economic development, “you cannot have sustainability without an equal society”.  

“Why does it have to be on the burden of the farmer to buy this machinery, if they are contracted by the millers?” said May. “The problem is that the people at the very bottom are forced to be responsible for things that they have no control over.” 

This story was produced as part of the Stockholm Environment Institute (Asia) media grant for environmental reporting. It does not necessarily reflect the views of SEI or its funders.

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Indonesia allows more waste to enter the ocean than any other country apart from China.

The archipelago of nearly 270 million people dumps a whopping 620,000 tonnes of plastic into its waterways annually, a figure the government says it wants to cut by two-thirds over the next five years.

Scientists hope following the waste’s movement will help them understand the full extent of the problem and decide how best to collect it based on seasonal, wind and water current patterns.

The World Bank-backed project is a collaboration between a team from Indonesia’s maritime affairs ministry and CLS, a subsidiary of France’s space agency. 

It is an indication of the issue’s global importance — today, there is an estimated 150 million tonnes of plastic circulating in the world’s oceans, with more being dumped every minute, according to US-based Ocean Conservancy.

– ‘Still in the ocean’ –

Since February, the team have deployed satellite beacons at the mouths of rivers around Jakarta, Bandung in Central Java and Palembang on Sumatra island.

“Today we’re launching GPS beacons to learn how the plastic debris gets into the sea,” says CLS tracking manager Ery Ragaputra, as he tosses a yellow device wrapped in a waterproof cover into the Cisadane river, which empties into the Java Sea near Jakarta.

“These trackers will follow where the trash gathers and where it lands.”

Data collected by the beacons, which have a one-year battery life, are transmitted hourly to a satellite that pings the information to CLS headquarters in France, and then back to screens at Indonesia’s maritime affairs ministry.

Initial figures are promising, researchers said.

“Ninety percent of the beacons we have released are beaching after a few hours or a few days, which is relatively good news as it makes it easier for the Indonesian authorities to collect [the rubbish],” said Jean-Baptiste Voisin, director of CLS’s local subsidiary.

“(But) some waste released six months ago is still drifting, so the debris is still in the ocean,” he added.

Among the beacons launched near Jakarta, some have travelled 1,100 kilometres (680 miles) east to the holiday island of Bali, while others from Indonesia’s second-biggest city Surabaya have floated all the way to fragile mangroves in westernmost Sumatra.

The goal is to release up to 70 beacons by the end of next year.

Migration threat

Cleaning up Indonesia’s waters is an immense challenge and these efforts may take years to bear fruit. 

While the capital Jakarta has banned single-use plastics, public awareness remains low and waste recycling is only in its infancy. The vast city’s rivers are a waste-choked eyesore.

Authorities hope that by identifying plastic drift and how it accumulates, they will be able to collect it more efficiently — for example by deploying boats to key rubbish sites or equipping the locations with waste-collecting traps.

They think it will also mean they can better anticipate its impact on the environment. 

There are concerns about the impact of ingesting microplastics on human health; and plastic waste is a threat to hundreds of marine species and birds. 

A sperm whale was found dead in Indonesia two years ago with some 115 plastic cups and 25 plastic bags in its stomach, among the nearly six kilograms (13 pounds) of plastic rubbish discovered in its carcass.

And plastic near Bali is a high risk for turtles migrating  across the Java Sea to the island, said Aulia Riza Farhan, the maritime ministry’s deputy director for surveillance and fleet operations.

“The most important thing is to know when the marine debris comes into contact with the migration of marine animals like turtles and whales,” he added.

© Agence France-Presse

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With mounds of trash piling up on the Cambodian capital’s streets since the strike began on 2 October, union representatives for the workers of beleaguered waste collection company Cintri struck a deal stating they would resume work the same day. 

But while this immediate dispute is over, the long-running issue of effective waste collection in the capital remains uncertain as Cintri and two as-yet unidentified companies are set to bid for control over Phnom Penh’s trash in nine days.

The Cintri workers’ union falls under the umbrella of the Cambodian Tourism Workers Federation (CTW), a broad labour advocacy group that includes 13 member organisations.

According to CTW President Touch Kosal, the deal signed Wednesday should put an end to the strike. For now, anyway.

“We want clarity, we don’t want future strikes,” Kosal told the Globe. “As long as the [Labour] Law is complied with, there won’t be any more.”

At the same time, the federation president acknowledged that the Cintri workers, perhaps motivated by anxieties ahead of the bid opener, had lept to striking before attempting any of the prior negotiation mechanisms required by that same law.

The workers had advanced five key demands to be met through striking, a list that included seniority pay and compensation for annual leave, potential severance and salary for a final month of employment. Workers also demanded “payment in lieu of prior notice”.

Two of those five demands were addressed in the agreement signed Wednesday, including the seniority pay and a promise of parting compensation for workers laid off in the event of downsizing at Cintri should their workload shrink, an uncertain prospect ahead of bid-day. 

Though his federation advocates on behalf of the workers and their platform, Kosal had some reservations about the specific cause.

“I don’t really agree the [items] are totally legitimate, it’s not really the time. Cintri did not declare bankruptcy or closure,” Kosal said, adding that long-term workers had been spurred by worries of losing their benefits ahead of possible cuts.

Even if they prove to be unfounded, the concern of the sanitation workers speaks to the mounting challenge presented to their employer by fed-up city residents and officials.

Once Phnom Penh’s sole private garbage collection company, Cintri has previously commanded a monopoly on trash collection in the capital since 2002 when it was awarded an exclusive 47-year contract. 

But as Phnom Penh’s population has ballooned, and its trash output with it, 

Cintri has come under fire as it’s struggled to effectively manage the rubbish the capital produces. Former governor Kep Chuktema even threatened in 2008 to dump the city’s garbage in front of Cintri’s headquarters if it didn’t improve services. 

They have the trucks, hundreds of them. Then, they’ve got experienced workers, so it doesn’t seem questionable … I think City Hall will tend more to Cintri because of that experience

The company, for what it’s worth, has complained that its resources are stretched, with it managing 3,000 tonnes of rubbish each day as of 2019, compared to 500 tonnes when it began operations 17 years prior. A decision last year to separate electricity and waste collection charges, previously rolled into Electricite du Cambodge bills, only reduced revenue further. 

Dissatisfaction among residents and officials alike led Prime Minister Hun Sen to announce in October last year that the government had temporarily taken over Cintri’s operations, and that he would be ending the firm’s reign and putting waste disposal rights up for bidding. 

“Letting Cintri continue [the service] is impossible,” Hun Sen said at the time. “We need to have at least three or four companies. We will arrange for bids, which will include Cintri.”

That bidding process, deciding the future of refuse collection in the capital, would be happening on 16 October Kosal said, with the results expected the same day. Given its experience and resources, he was confident that Cintri would retain control over the majority of refuse collection in the capital. 

“First, they have the trucks, hundreds of them. Then, they’ve got experienced workers, so it doesn’t seem questionable,” Kosal said. “I think City Hall will tend more to Cintri because of that experience.”

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