Garbage banks set up at hospitals in Thailand

BANGKOK, January 4 (TNA) - Hospitals in Thailand are increasingly setting up garbage banks to separate different types of wastes as part of the Ministry of Public Health's campaign on environmental conservation. Dr. Somsak Akkasilp, Director-General of the ministry's Department of Medical Sciences, told journalists of the updated move on Friday, acknowledging that the first garbage bank has already been opened at the Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health in Bangkok. Dr. Somsak announced that the Thai Ministry of Public Health's campaign, aimed, as well, to reduce the pollution and other environmental threats from wastes in line with the ongoing global alert, also includes a call on cooperation from the general public and patients who visit or stay at all hospitals in the country, under his department's supervision, to reduce the use of such environmentally-unfriendly materials as plastic bags, bottles, cups and styrofoam food containers because the plastic-based garbage takes up to over 450 years to become decomposed or biodegradable. Dr. Somsak stated that hospitals under his department's supervision have agreed with owners or operators of food and refreshment shops in the hospitals to give a five-baht discount each for consumers whenever they bring their own tiffin carriers or other kinds of food carriers to buy their food and a two-baht discount each for those who bring their own cups to buy refreshment drinks. The senior official, meanwhile, proclaimed a success for a certain extent in the Thai Ministry of Public Health's earlier move under the same campaign, in which patients at hospitals have been urged to use cloth bags, instead of plastic bags, to bring back home their medicines or other pharmaceutical products prescribed by their doctors. The senior official cited Nopparatrajathanee Hospital in Bangkok as a good example of successfully reducing its plastic garbage by up to 30,000 kilograms so far through its call on its patients to bring their own cloth bags to take their medicines or other pharmaceutical products, saying that up to 200,000-300,000 kilograms of plastic garbage should be reduced if all hospitals in the country successfully campaigned on the use of cloth bags by their patients. (TNA)