8:46 AM Apr 29, 1997

ASIA: BOOM-TIME FOR CLEAN-UP FIRMS

Bangkok, Apr 28 (PANOS/Siddharth Singh) -- For long, the rapidly expanding city of Bangkok has been overwhelmed by the inevitable by-product of modern economic growth - waste.

But flooding the city's municipal authorities now are offers from investors around the globe to set up and operate what could be one of South-east Asia's largest waste disposal programmes.

Early this year, when the Bangkok Municipal Authority (BMA) invited tenders to set up and operate a garbage disposal plant, 112 companies responded, including such big names as Sumitomo of Japan and Waste Management of the United States.

Expected to cost over 1.2 billion dollars, the plant will be entirely financed and owned by the bid-winner, with BMA taking responsibility for garbage collection.

Having chalked up impressive growth rates for over a decade, Asia's Tiger and would-be Tiger economies are now emerging as a major market for the environment technology business.

After high rise buildings, expressways and elevated rail projects, waste disposal sites are the latest symbol of Asia's entry into the developed world.

"We are surprised at the level of interest shown in this project by foreign companies," said Kraisak Choonhavan, an adviser to the BMA.

For those in the business of cleaning up the environment, however, there is little to be surprised about.

This is because Thailand, like many other countries of this region, is a rich hunting ground for the raw material these businesses thrive on, everything from household rubbish to discarded tyres and toxic industrial wastes.

According to the US-based Environmental Industry Association, the global market for environmental technologies in 1995 was worth 300 billion dollars, and the figure is expected to double by the year 2010.

The Association estimates that US firms make up 134 billion dollars, or 49% of the market, while Europe's share is 26.5% and Japan's 13%.

Around 30,000 firms in the US are engaged in the business. With 20,000 more in Europe and 9,000 in Japan, it is clearly boom-time for the clean-up business.

There's good reason for that. Currently, much of the world's waste is generated by consumption in the West. About 98% of the world's toxic waste comes from the developed world, with the US and Germany, as the leading countries.

But this is changing. Some Asian countries, notably South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, China and India, are now contributing more and more to the global pile of waste.

According to Britain's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the market value of the clean-up business in South-east and South Asia (excluding China and India) is estimated to reach 12 billion dollars by the year 2000 and 50 billion dollars by 2010.

The Chinese market is valued at 2 billion dollars annually and is expected to reach 5 billion dollars by the year 2000 and 20 billion dollars by 2010. The Indian market will probably be worth 2 billion dollars by 2000 and 7 billion dollars by 2010.

"The possibilities for selling environmental technologies in Asia seem endless," says Dennis Hearth, Director (Asia-Pacific) of the US-based International Surfacing Inc., one of the largest suppliers of rubberised asphalt in the world.

Hearth's company helps recycle millions of used automobile tyres to make rubberised asphalt. This is used to lay roads that Hearth says are more durable than those laid with conventional asphalt concrete.

Asphalt rubber is also used to pave runways at airports and for coating mine walls and waste dumps to prevent seepage of toxic materials into the environment.

Naturally, in a country like Thailand, where over 500 new automobiles hit the streets every day, Hearth hopes to find plenty of rich pickings like discarded tyres for his products. The Laotian government earlier this year became the first Asian government to approve the technology for use in new highways.

But there is a seamier side to the story of waste disposal; with waste-storage capacities in industrialised countries becoming saturated or proving too expensive, Asia is also turning into a dumping site for waste from the developed world.

According to research published in 1994 by the international environment organisation, Greenpeace, more than 120 countries, outside the wealthy Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are being asked to accept huge quantities of US and European industrial waste, ostensibly for "recycling". Many of these countries are in Asia.

"Despite having elaborate environment protection laws covering the safe storage, treatment and disposal of waste, most Asian countries lack the administrative or technological means to enforce their laws or even assess how much waste is being produced or imported," says Srisuwan Kuankachorn, Director of the Bangkok-based Project for Ecological Recovery. It is also cheaper to store waste in developing countries. According to Greenpeace, the storage cost for waste products in parts of Asia can be as low as 40 dollars a tonne, compared to 1,000-1,500 dollars in Europe and the US.

There is, however, little government regulation.

Thailand's National Environment Board, for instance, is supposed to be a monitoring body but it has neither the qualified personnel nor the technical capability to judge the "greenness" of a project.

One alternative is to have Western experts carry out environmental assessments. This has been done but it has been found to be too time-consuming and expensive. So the government takes the easy way out -- it simply glosses over the environmental aspect of various projects.

Thailand's first major waste disposal plant in Rayong, 150 km from Bangkok, has run into opposition from locals and environmentalists who oppose its planned use of incinerators which consume large amounts of energy and emit potentially harmful gases.

At the same time, some Asian countries such as Vietnam and India are experimenting with "greener" waste disposal technology, such as for reconverting waste into fuel pallets, gases for industrial and energy production and bricks for construction.

"The Tiger economies should not repeat the mistake that they have often made with their industrialisation process, that of hurriedly importing waste disposal technology and equipment ill-suited to their local conditions," says Srisuwan Kuankachorn.