By AFP - Agence France Presse
New wave: start-up collects plastic from the Thai ocean
by Sara HUSSEIN
When a longtail boat arrives at a fishing village on the island of Koh Chang in southern Thailand, the villagers gather to sell their wares - not seafood, but plastic.
The villagers, members of the semi-nomadic Moken people, are selling to Tide, a start-up trying to create new value from old plastic collected at or near the sea.
Recyclers have long been collecting part of the more than six million tons of plastic that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates enters the ocean each year.
But Tide works directly with everyone in the process, from collectors in remote Thai fishing villages to carpet manufacturers in the Netherlands.
Its plastic is traceable and certified as “ocean-bound,” a process that involves annual audits by an NGO.
It is processed using a method that, according to Tide, results in a recycled product of comparable quality to virgin plastic.
“We are convinced that there is more than enough plastic in our world and that we should take advantage of what already exists,” said Marc Krebs, co-founder of the Swiss company.
In Koh Chang, a 30-minute boat ride from the sleepy southern town of Ranong, the arrival of the Tide boat provoked a flurry of activity.
Mimi, 65, has brought several old rice sacks with bottles that join a growing pile of torn fishing nets, old ropes, and discarded gallons.
“The more I collect, the more comes in. I can't collect everything,” she told AFP, refusing to give her family's name.
The residents live along the beach in precarious wooden houses on stilts.
Below, the mark of the high tide is clear - behind it is a carpet of garbage, from polystyrene boxes and flip-flops to takeaway cups and packets of potato chips.
Only a small proportion is commercially viable for recycling. Tide buys six categories, including fishing nets and common types of plastic bottles (PET) and cardboard boxes (HDPE).
“Every day, we have a lot of products that we can't sell and can't recycle, and I'm sure there's a lot more of that in the ocean,” Tide's director of operations in Thailand, Nirattisai Ponputi, told AFP.
Costly sorting
Although the market price of recycled plastic fluctuates, Tide pays a fixed fee in Koh Chang to encourage continued collection.
Sometimes, they take items that can't be recycled because the island has no waste management options, so the alternative is often open burning.
Even recyclable items can be a challenge.
Bottles with printed logos must be “hot washed” before processing; colored plastic can contaminate the recycled material, and most labels printed in ink cannot be recycled.
A PET soft drink bottle can have an HDPE cap and a PVC label, creating a costly sorting process.
Sometimes, it's not even clear which plastic has been used, so Tide uses a spectrometer to find out what can be recycled.
“There are no regulations on what plastic you can put in your product, so it's up to the collectors to sort it out,” said Capucine Paour, Tide's external project manager.
The plastic collected on Koh Chang and the surrounding islands goes to Tide's facility in Ranong, where workers meticulously sort it before pressing it into bales.
Founded in 2019, Tide collects around 1,000 tons of plastic a year in Thailand and elsewhere, including Mexico.
“It's still a very small amount” compared to the global scale of the problem, Krebs acknowledged.
“Banning is better!
The plastic collected is processed into pellets before being sent to customers such as Condor Group, one of Europe's largest carpet manufacturers.
The company uses recycled material from Tide and other products for around a quarter of its products, including carpets, car mats, and artificial grass.
“Tide is unique,” said Jan Hoekman Jr, one of the company's directors.
“You can follow the product from the collection to the final products, which you see here. It's all transparent, which is very important when it comes to sustainability.”
Tide says its product is 40% more expensive than virgin plastic, but customers like Condor Group are willing to pay a premium.
“We see sustainability not just as a trend, but more as stewardship for future generations,” said Hoekman Jr.
Condor Group's bustling production lines seem a million kilometers from the quiet beaches of Koh Chang, where Wiranuch Scimone, 54, collects plastic for Tide.
In her 20 years in Koh Chang, she has seen the waste that comes ashore go from fishing nets to huge quantities of unrecyclable polystyrene foam that locals end up burning.
The monsoon waves bring in so much garbage that she sometimes spends hours on a beach without managing to collect it all.
“It would be better if there was no plastic,” she said, adding in English: ‘Banning is better!’.
Tide, a for-profit company, is still a relatively small operation, but it is expanding, going to Ghana next.
“You have to start somewhere,” said Krebs.
“We're pretty convinced that we're at the beginning of a new wave.”
sah/rsc/cwl
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