More than six years after being banned for their role as unwitting accomplices to murder, thousands of garbage bins recently returned to the sidewalks of major downtown streets.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration has deployed more than 35,000 of the ruggedized plastic containers along major avenues such as Sukhumvit, Silom and Petchaburi roads.
Each bin is reportedly designed to last for several years at a cost of THB2,000 each. More significantly, the bins were designed to meet the government’s criteria established after synchronized bombings killed three people on New Year’s Eve in 2006. No one has ever been arrested for those attacks, which some Thai authorities blamed on southern separatists.
The lack of convenient trash receptacles has been an oft-cited source of frustration among Bangkok’s visitors and residents alike, as people have had few litter disposal options except to employ one of the impromptu, DIY trash heaps which litter the streets. Littering fines also became an inventive source of police revenue, with groups such as the infamous “cigarette mafia” corralling tourists and demanding THB2,000 fines for improperly disposed butts.
