Do you need a plastic bag?”

In June, a group of year 11 students from NIST International School joined Expat Life for a week’s work experience. We wanted it to be an interesting and worthwhile experience for them so as we are currently blessed to have a social media specialist volunteering his skills to us. He set them the task of coming up with a CSR project on an issue that they felt strongly about.

After much discussion, they came back with the unnecessary overuse of the old chestnut in Thailand – plastic bags.

As we are in the rainy season there has been much coverage in the press lately as Bangkok floods most years because of the disposal of rubbish in the khlongs blocking the drains and discarded plastic is always blamed as one of the primary causes. There were also reports of a 10km island of plastic waste floating in the Gulf of Thailand off Prachaup Khiri Khan.

They came up with a hastag for Twitter – #EighttoZero as the average resident in Thailand uses 8 – yes 8 plastic bags a day. Across Thailand that means 500,000,000 – five hundred million bags a day! The average bag is in use for just 12 minutes but it takes 500 to 1000 years (depending on which report you read) for it to fully decompose. The problem is that plastic bags have only been around for 50 years so no one actually knows!

Our social media expert showed them TedTalks and YouTube videos of other campaigns in other countries. They collated data and results from other campaigns across the globe. They found that the UK was just one of the countries that had reduced their plastic bag usage by up to 85% when they introduced a charge for bags. That was bought about my government legislation. It changed consumer habits through education and awareness and they decided that this was initially perhaps an easier objective than bringing pressure on the Thai authorities.

If we could reeducate consumers and show them how harmful their actions were then perhaps they could make a difference. They designed and posted a petition to try and get others involved but soon realised that the online petition that they first chose was only available in Thai – not good when they wanted to recruit the international schools first so moved the petition to another site.

When their week was over students from Bangkok Patana and KIS took over. It was pleasing to see that these young people, tomorrows generation, were so conscious and ecologically aware of the danger plastics represent in the modern world.

They saw that a number of the major retailers in Thailand had launched individual campaigns and achieved differing levels of success but it was felt that if it was possible to create a campaign that a number, if not all, retailers joined it would be more successful. United we stand divided we fall.

Some of the retailers that we reached out to proved difficult to influence. ‘They had tried it before’ and or ‘had done it and what could a group of kids teach them’? Each one that we spoke to however we were able to refine our approach and we currently have a number onboard.

CP All, Tesco, Big C, Villa Market, Mega Bangna were all making the right comments and saying that they would join the campaign. We approached UNEP, UNDP and each time we discussed the subject we were referred in turn to other interested parties.

They designed an action plan – schools first, as students have the time to devote to signing up others and they will inherit the world that we create and live in. They also felt that schools have a wide community. The teachers, parents, board of directors many of them had businesses. One of the students signed up his Dad’s and his Aunt’s companies. We reached out to other media owners and so far, so good everyone we spoke to agreed that it was a good cause and we could count on their support.

What we need though is everyone not just to sign the petition but for everyone to send it to all of their friends and family and ask them to encourage their friends in turn to sign and pass it on. Could we make the campaign turn viral? We need your help. We need you to sign the petition and then send it on to all your friends, family and address book and ask them to do the same.

If the kids of today set their minds on making it happen
they can! Let’s all join forces behind them.
Two simple requests:
1. Sign the petition
2. Share the post/petition
www.bit.ly/2sdhmxd
#EIGHTtoZERO