By Trina Tan
Thailand is making headway in its efforts to establish a systematic and sustainable framework for managing packaging waste. In February, the Thai Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) unveiled its second draft of the Sustainable Packaging Management Act, jointly proposed with its Pollution Control Department (PCD).
In comparison with March 2024’s first draft, this latest version aims to establish a more comprehensive management system that covers the entire lifecycle of packaging by clarifying responsibility allocation, economic measures, and technical specifications. The aims are to reduce resource waste, lower carbon emissions, and promote Thailand’s transition to a circular economy.
This act covers all containers, packaging and materials used to contain, package, transport, handle, protect, promote, market, or sell products. This includes single-use packaging or equipment made from plastics, glass, metal, paper, composite materials, and so on.
It also clearly defines the packaging lifecycle – material selection, design, production, use, reuse, collection, sorting, recycling, disposal – as well as the responsibility chain of those individuals, groups or organisations involved, including producers or importers, users or consumers, distributors, collectors of packaging waste from both the public and private sectors, and recycling and disposal facilities.
The main power of the act will come from a soon-to-be-formed Sustainable Packaging Policy Committee. This committee will be tasked to approve details, types, quality, characteristics, and raw materials or materials used in the production of packaging that are prohibited for sale. It will also be able to rule on the prohibition or restriction of certain types of packaging or packaging in specific areas, and the identification of types and categories of packaging that are difficult to collect and reuse.
In addition, it will advise the Thai Cabinet on economic, financial and fiscal measures and recommend amendments or improvements to laws relating to promoting sustainable packaging management.
Aiding the Policy Committee will be a new Sustainable Packaging Management Committee, which is to essentially drive all the plans and policies of the Act. Some of the things it will be tasked to do include:
● Recommending policies to the Policy Committee that promote sustainable packaging management.
● Preparing plans to promote sustainable packaging management and providing recommendations.
● Preparing a proposal to identify the types, quality, characteristics, and raw materials or materials used in the production of packaging that are prohibited for sale.
● Preparing a proposal to prohibit or restrict the use of certain types of packaging or packaging in specific areas.
● Approving the development of identification of packaging types that must be collected for reuse.
● Preparing proposals to identify types and categories of packaging that are difficult to collect and reuse.
It also has the all-important task (at least to industry players) of approving the development of guidelines for the calculation of organisational service fees related to packaging management.
Who does what?
The responsibilities on producers have been further narrowed in this second draft. For instance, the act will have producers registering with the PCD within 180 days from the date the designated packaging types and categories are announced in the government gazette. They will also have to submit a packaging responsibility management plan to the PCD that maps out how they will achieve packaging waste collection and recycling targets.
The act also now makes clear how the recycling, collection and reuse of packaging waste is to be done – via a packaging responsibility organisation (PRO) on behalf of the producer. Service fees will have to be paid by producers to their chosen PRO. However, for packaging that is difficult to recycle, producers must pay a fee to the PCD instead – what is still unclear is what constitutes packaging that is ‘difficult to recycle’.
Notably, the act lays the bulk of the responsibility of sorting general packaging waste from general waste on consumers. It states that no one can dispose of packaging waste mixed with general waste.
The central government is delegating the execution of this consumer responsibility to local governments, which must enact local regulations that require consumers to separate waste. In addition, local governments have to manage the classification and collection system for general waste and packaging waste, and report the quantity of used packaging collected. It will be interesting to see how the different local governments tackle this, and how much the local regulations will vary from province to province.
What is already known is the penalties for non-compliance. The second draft of the act lists out the fines that will have to be paid for various violations, including key ones, such as a fine of up to THB 1 million ($29,650), with a daily fine of up to THB 10,000 ($295) for producers or PROs that fail to meet recycling targets; a fine of up to THB 100,000 ($2,965) for producers or PROs that submit false reports; and a THB 5,000 ($150) fine for consumers who mix packaging waste with general waste.
In its introduction of the second draft, MONRE explains that although local governments are supposed to be responsible for waste disposal, the reality is that ‘currently, there are more than 2,000 local administrative organisations that do not have the ability to properly collect, transport, and dispose of waste, resulting in a large amount of waste and used packaging remaining and leaking into the environment’.
‘From past studies, it was found that each year, more than 100,000 tonnes of various types of packaging leak into the ocean, causing Thailand to be ranked as one of the top 10 countries that release pollution into the ocean’, the MONRE draft adds.
Resource recovery of waste material that can actually be reprocessed is limited, MONRE continues, highlighting a number of issues that, should a reader be discerning enough, hint at the nature of new policies we will see in the coming years.
For instance, the draft refers to packaging that is ‘made of various types of materials that are bonded together’ and, hence, difficult to reuse. Another point is made on ‘production techniques, such as printing colours directly on the material, which lowers the quality of the recycled materials’. In addition, ‘there has been a change from using reusable packaging to single-use packaging that is cheaper and less desirable’, states the MONRE draft.
It doesn’t make much reading between the lines to understand the future direction of plastics packaging regulation in Thailand.
In late December 2024, the Thai Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Pollution Control Department jointly announced that they would be modifying regulations to facilitate the adoption of ‘clear drinking water bottles without plastics labels’.
Pharmacist Lertchai Lertvut, deputy secretary-general of the Thai FDA, says the agency is drafting regulations to allow bottled water brands to either emboss, print with food-grade ink, or laser print essential product information – product name, food registration number, volume, production date and expiry date – directly on bottles instead of using plastics shrink sleeves. Additional product details could be accessible to consumers via QR codes on bottle caps.
“Because the contaminated glue and printing ink (from conventional plastics sleeves) make it difficult to recycle PET plastics bottles, the price of recycled plastics pellets is higher than new plastics pellets,” explains Lertvut. “If the regulations are adjusted, bottled water manufacturers, including natural mineral water makers, will be able to display the necessary information on the containers.”
As part of its carrot-and-stick approach, the Thai FDA and PCD are also proposing tax reduction measures for bottled water brands that transition to recycled materials.
Valued at $13.87 billion in 2022, Thailand’s rPET market is expected to grow at a rate of 5.7 per cent per year until 2029. It is predicted that the amount of rPET procurement and production, valued at 228,000t and 128,000t respectively in 2018, will increase to 550,000t and 290,000t in 2030.
