Economic Growth and Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries: The Case of Bangkok

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the problems regarding waste and waste disposal that Bangkok currently faces. One can speculate that rapid economic growth causes the problem of solid waste disposal in urban areas to shift from one that focuses mainly on public health concerns to one that deals with cost problems that are the result of the formation of an advanced, mass consumption society. In this paper, by comparing several social statistical indices for Bangkok and several of Japan's major cities, I have attempted to illuminate Bangkok's current waste situation and make generalizations regarding their character.

The amount of garbage in Bangkok is currently equivalent to that for the major cities in Japan, and the rate of increase for garbage in Bangkok exceeds the growth rate of population. However, the primary means of garbage disposal remains to be open dumping, which is due to the fact that the budgetary resource base of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), which handles garbage disposal, is not sufficient. Comparing total sanitation expenditures for the BMA and Tokyo, it is found that the ratio of sanitation expenditures to total budget is higher in Bangkok, but that the ratio of these same expenditures as a percentage of gross regional product is much higher in Tokyo. This suggests that the costs of disposing of garbage into the environment in Thailand is cheaper than in Japan. In societies like the one found in current-day Japan that suffer from a lack of final disposal sites, it makes sense to spend money, recycle waste and reduce the amount of trash as much as possible. However, in the case of Bangkok, where waste disposal costs are low, there is little fiscal rationale for promoting recycling. The creation of a social system that reflects the social costs of providing waste treatment facilities (such as those represented by the difficulty of providing new waste disposal sites) and justifies upstream waste management policies (including recycling promotion programs) is the first step in solving Bangkok's waste problems.