Lilly, 12 years old, Thailand's Greta Thunberg at war with plasticsAFP • 16 / 09 / 2019
"I am a child at war". Lilly, 12, skips school, climbs on her paddle board and paddles through a Bangkok canal filled with trash that she carefully picks up. Its fight: plastic in Thailand, the sixth largest contributor to ocean pollution.
In June, the American-Thai teenager won her first victory: helping convince a major distributor in Bangkok, Central, not to issue single-use bags in her supermarkets once a week.
In the process, other distribution groups established in Thailand, including the operator of the Japanese chain 7-Eleven omnipresent in the kingdom, pledged in early September to stop giving from January 2020.
"This is going in the right direction," Lilly smirked, pushing her paddle down to approach a bag full of rusty cans and ripped bottles.
“At first I was too young to be an activist, but Greta (Thunberg) gave me confidence. When adults don't do anything, it's up to us children to act.”
Ralyn Satidtanasarn, says Lilly, will not be in New York alongside the young Swedish muse of the fight against global warming, for the parade organized on September 20 a few days before the UN climate conference. She will demonstrate in Bangkok. "My place is here. The fight must also be done in Southeast Asia," she said.
Recently, several countries in the region - Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia - have stepped up to the plate, refusing to be "the trash" of the West, and have returned full containers of waste. plastics directly to the sender.
But they continue to generate astronomical quantities on their territory.
In Thailand, the plastic bag is omnipresent to pack hundreds of thousands of meals served in street canteens, drinks brought to work ... A Thai uses an average of eight per day, or about 3.000 per year, of after government data, 12 times more than in the European Union.
And Thailand is the 6e biggest contributor to ocean pollution, according to environmental NGO Greenpeace.
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