• 
• 

Published on September 2, 2007

How many plastic bags do you use each day? Two, three ... 10? If you live alone and rely on take-away food, then the latter is more likely true.

How many pieces of writing paper are you throwing away each month? If you're a student, or work in an office, it's probably a lot.

Imagine, then, the effect of this volume of waste multiplied locally, nationally ... even globally. And, we haven't even touched on industrial waste, vehicle emissions and anything else contributing to carbon-dioxide-emission levels.

Former United States vice president Al Gore's influential book and documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", has helped focus world attention on global warming.

The best-selling "The Weather Makers" by Australian Tim Flannery succinctly states that, by 2050, the world's population is expected to reach around nine billion and, unless there are dramatic changes, we'll need "two planets".

Let's take a local look. Of 209 countries, Thailand ranks 22nd in carbon-dioxide emissions, according to "Loke Ron: Took Sing Ti Rao Tham Plean Plang Lok Samuer", ("Global Warming: Everything We Do Can Change the World"), by Thitinant Sristhita. The US, obviously, is No 1, followed by China, Russia, India and Japan.

A comparison of Southeast Asian countries has Thailand as the second biggest polluter after Indonesia.

Worried about the staggering volume of paper wasted in universities, a group of four young minds from the non-profit Volunteer Spirit project, or Jitasa, devised a way to produce recycled-paper notebooks under a project called "Paper Ranger".

Early this year it collected paper thrown away after being written on one side and made notebooks utilising the blank sides.

"The project is an easy alternative in the battle to save the world and its forests," explains Napa Thamsongsana, assistant art director of Volunteer Spirit.

Chaiyaporn Intuvisarnkul of Pabpim Publishing bound the first batch of 400 notebooks. "Making the reused-paper notebooks is a lot more labour intensive than producing normal ones and that means they are more expensive. But, I believe if more and more people are eco-conscious, costs will fall," Chaiyaporn says.

Meanwhile, local furniture company Osisu creates designs inspired by environmental concerns with huge success in Milan and Paris.

Principal designer and architect Singh Intrachooto transforms waste from construction sites or factories - wood chips, computer parts, juice cartons, shredded paper, metal, plastic bags and even orange peel - into stunning, contemporary hand-crafted furniture, bags and accessories.

"As an architect I tried to design green buildings. But I was creating a lot of construction waste. Clearly, I was not really making green buildings. The realisation was a shock," says Singh about his inspiration to start this project last year.

Singh heads the building-technology department at Kasetsart University's architecture school and has a doctorate in design technology and innovation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Along the same lines, design director at Plato Furniture, Rush Pleansuk, has created a range of eco-chic furniture that has customers in Mexico, France, Sweden and Singapore.

Rush promotes the use of renewable forests and has contracts in Lampang Province. It takes more than 40 years for teak and ebony trees to grow to a size that's useable but "replaceable forests" take just 25 years, according to Rush.

Nevertheless, managing raw materials is a challenge.

Fabric designer Jarupatcha Achavasmit is responsible for the Royal Weave brand of interestingly textured carpets.

The carpets are made from 100-per-cent hand-woven wool from New Zealand sourced from the off-cuts of carpet company Tai Ping.

"The philosophy is not to sell them as recycled, even though they are. It takes careful planning and design," say Jarupatcha, a PhD student in social sustainability at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London.

Selling well both here and abroad, the carpets are typical of Thailand's small but growing number of recycling success stories.

www.volunteerspirit.org

www.osisu.com

www.platoform.com

www.jarupatcha.com

Aree Chaisatien

The Nation