Osotspa Teams up with Partners to Build Eco-Friendly Recycling Community Model through ‘Zero Waste Station @Bang Kachao River Bend’ Campaign Year 2

Osotspa Public Company Limited jointly supports the ‘Zero Waste’ Station@ Bang Kachao River Bend Year 2 campaign with The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), Chak Daeng temple, Saha Pathanapibul PCL (SPC) and Principal Capital PCL's, under the “Synergy of Bang Kachao Major Community” campaign which aims to connect listed companies with community sectors to build awareness and change behaviors in waste management among all groups in the community starting from the residents and entrepreneurs to organizational agencies in Bang Kachao River Bend area. The campaign, aiming for the exchange of 15 tons of waste throughout the year, promotes knowledge of environmental and social responsibilities among the youth who will be the driving force towards sustainability.

SET’s zero waste campaign under the Care the Whale project has created a collaborative area to promote household and community waste management with the pilot campaign called the ‘Zero Waste’ Station@ Bang Kachao River Bend, launched in 2021 in six communities around the Bang Kachao River Bend area in Samut Prakan province near Bangkok. This year, the campaign is further expanded to embrace more partners related to the Circular Economy and healthcare, add the glass bottles to the project and reach out to the youth with the common goal to reduce global warming, create a mechanism to ease the cost of living and promote healthy living for the community dwellers.

Wat Chak Daeng Abbot Phra Rachwatcharabunchid (Pranom Thammalangkaro) said that the temple has become a learning center of waste management for the communities situated along this bend of the Chao Phraya River. The campaign last year played an important role in supporting environmental management and helping the community dwellers by enabling them to redeem their garbage for consumer products sponsored by partners from the private sector. The wastes were recycled as building materials for Tripitaka classroom. This is a way to promote circular economy. This year, we will extend the outcome to awareness-raising among local people in the community to foster waste segregation behavior and make them realize about the value of waste that can be processed or recycled.

SET President Pakorn Peetathawatchai said that SET aims to enhance economic, social, and environmental sustainability for the benefit of all sectors in line with the vision 'To Make the Capital Market Work for Everyone' and environmental management based on the Circular Economy principle. Apart from the new partners, the campaign will focus on encouraging entrepreneurs, shops, Tambon Administrative Organizations and schools to sort waste, especially promoting the knowledge and practical implementation of systematic waste management among youth. Furthermore, SET has also provided the Climate Care Platform tools to the station in order to calculate reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent as well as the comparison of waste sorting and tree planting, to produce concrete results on a continuous basis.

Ms. Sutida Siamharn, Head of Corporate Communication and CSR, Osotspa Public Company Limited, said with the company’s vision of “The Power to Enhance Life,” Osotspa focuses on the resource management that can reduce the impact on the environment based on circular economy’s principles and in line with the campaign. Therefore, the company plays a part in this year’s project by setting up drop-off points at the temple for the community members to bring along and drop their glass bottles. The company will then recycle them into new products and will return Osotspa products to the Chak Daeng temple to be used internally or for the benefit of the community in various events. Moreover, OSP will coordinate with the recycling companies in the community to recycle these bottles and contribute an amount of money equivalent to the received used glass at the market rate to the temple in appreciation of the personnel who have put the effort into this project. In addition, the company has also created a video clip about the journey of the glass bottles and the guideline of waste segregation for recycling, aiming to tell the know-how and build the understanding so that the community will be a part of the synergy to protect the environment altogether.

From September to December of 2021, the Care the Whale project's "Zero Waste" campaign managed to sort and recycle a total of 4,770 kilograms of waste from households and organizations, reducing 4,093.85 kilograms of CO2 equivalent. In 2022, the campaign is expected to gather 15,000 kilograms of recyclable wastes from the community dwellers and entrepreneurs around the Bang Kachao River Bend area. These items, including plastic bottles, food bags, cloths and glass bottles, can be exchanged for consumer and healthcare products at Chak Daeng temple all year round.