Sustainable Packaging Waste Management: TARO ECO BRICKS

        Premier Marketing Public Company Limited not only focuses on production quality and providing nutritional value to consumers but also firmly adheres to conducting business with social responsibility. Consequently, the company aims to promote responsible consumption by including proper disposal instructions on its packaging. Furthermore, recognizing the increased consumption of packaged goods during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company launched the "Reduce Waste, Create Benefit" campaign. This initiative seeks to foster a shared awareness of valuing resources, starting with the company itself as a producer of consumer goods using plastic packaging – one of the most difficult types of waste to decompose, taking up to 450 years. Acknowledging this issue, the company has taken responsibility by reducing waste from Taro product packaging and transforming it into something useful, leading to the "TARO ECO BRICKS: Delicious Sharing, Waste Reduction for Benefit" project.

• Actions and Results

This project is a collaboration between Taro products and various partners, including employees within the Premier Group, Pun Gun Foundation, Peung Noi Tuksu Organization, N-Life Foundation, and over 100 collection points nationwide through Pun Gun stores and other establishments, as well as via postal donations to Pun Gun Shop by the Yuwapath Foundation, No. 7 Soi On Nut 90, Prawet Subdistrict/District, Bangkok 10250. The aim is to collect empty Taro product wrappers and other plastic packaging to be transformed into plastic bricks (TARO ECO BRICKS).

TARO ECO BRICKS are made by tightly packing empty plastic wrappers into plastic bottles. These can be used as a substitute for bricks in construction and as a raw material for making various appliances. Each 1.5-liter plastic bottle filled in this way weighs approximately 500 grams and requires about 100 plastic wrappers. Alternatively, a 600-milliliter plastic bottle would use around 42 empty plastic wrappers.

 

The next step is to use these plastic bricks to build a learning space for making earth houses at the Peung Noi Tuksu (Little Bee Warrior) Education Garden, located at Peung Sook Organic Farm. This will serve as a place where interested individuals can learn how to make plastic bricks and construct earth houses.


 

• Targets

  1. Collect a sufficient number of empty Taro wrappers and plastic bags to produce 10,000 ECO BRICKS, to be completed by the end of 2021.
  2. Utilize the Eco Bricks as raw materials to assemble usable items such as tables and chairs, as well as for constructing a learning space for making earth houses at the Peung Noi Tuksu (Little Bee Warrior) Education Garden at Peung Sook Organic Farm in Pathum Thani Province. The construction is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022.

• Results

The collection of a sufficient number of empty Taro wrappers and plastic bags to produce 10,000 ECO BRICKS was successfully completed by the end of 2021, as scheduled.