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CircularJourney

Southeast Asia — 2027

Thailand

Thailand combines a large domestic food economy with tourism volumes that swing municipal waste loads sharply by season. Systems that work in March may not work in August.
Research plannedOn the roadmap. Host organizations are being approached.

Research question

How does a municipal system absorb a waste load that doubles and halves with the season?

Written before the mission, and published unchanged. Findings are assessed against this question rather than the question being rewritten to fit the findings.

Research scope

Food waste, tourism and seasonal load

What we want to understand

  1. 01How organic and food waste are separated, collected and treated.
  2. 02What tourism does to collection schedules, staffing and disposal capacity.
  3. 03Whether hotel and restaurant waste is handled differently from household waste.
  4. 04What happens to organic material once it is collected.
  5. 05How rural and urban systems differ within the same policy framework.
Region
Southeast Asia
Research lens
02 · Peer countriesWhat are countries facing comparable challenges doing differently?
Research theme
Organic waste and highly variable demand
Field research
Planned for 2027
Framework themes
food wasteorganic wastecollectioncitizen behavioureconomicsindia applicability
Relevant SDGs
SDG 11SDG 12SDG 13

Cities

Thailand

Bangkok

A very large food economy and a seasonal tourism load that together make organic waste the defining problem.

Research planned

Missions

CJ-2027-THResearch planned

Thailand: organic waste under a seasonal load

Closes the first season. Chosen because seasonal variation is a problem many Indian cities share for different reasons.

Reached: Travel (1/10)Late 2027

Findings

No findings yet

Field research in Thailand is research planned. This section stays empty until there is something we have actually seen. The questions above are what we will be asking.

What India could take from Thailand

Assessment pending

Any judgement about transfer to India would be speculation until the system has been seen working, and its costs and dependencies understood. Anything published here will be labelled as a proposal until a pilot reports.

What Thailand could take from India

Nothing has been researched yet, so nothing is claimed. These are the parts of India’s experience we expect to be worth putting in front of practitioners here, and what we will ask them about.

  • Ward-scale composting sustained where centralised plants proved fragile.
  • Citizen participation built through local bodies rather than national campaigns.

Read the reasoning on why this is a two-way journey.

Case studies

No case studies yet

Case studies are published from field research, with sources and limitations.

Film and clips

Notices

Organizations and experts

Directory not yet open

We list an organization only once it has agreed to a public listing, and a person only with their consent. Outreach for this mission is under way; entries appear here as permissions come back.Take part