Thailand is an agricultural country where many crop bags are used. Approximately 100 million bags are used per year, causing the problem of a continuous increase in plastic waste from the agricultural sector. The commercially available nursery bags are plastic bags that take about 600 years to decompose and sometimes flow into the sea as pollution to aquatic life resulting in microplastics that come back to harm humans. Therefore, the use of nursery bags made from biodegradable plastics is an alternative solution to this problem.
“ROT-2020” (ROT -2020) is an environmentally friendly substitute for seedling bags. A research result of Assistant Professor Siwarot Boonrasri, a lecturer of Rubber and Polymer Technology in the Faculty of Engineering and Agro-Industry in Maejo University is another option in the agricultural sector. Any agriculturists can do it by themselves to promote the community economy, reduce waste and be environmentally friendly.
Assistant Professor Siwarot also added that “Rot-2020 bags are not only useful in cultivating seedlings. There are still many advantages, such as in academics side, they are new types of biodegradable material that can be easily produced, in social, community and locality and environmental sides, the new bags are environmentally friendly nursery bags that the people in the
community and agriculturists can produce and use by themselves. This kind of bag also supports the government’s policy of adding value to agricultural products, rubber and cassava, bio-materials, green materials, and circular economy. Besides in the economic side, it also helps to add value to agricultural products, rubber, cassava, and environmentally friendly. It will cause the flow of the economic system in Thailand because about 100 million nursery bags are used per year in cultivating seedlings. There is also a need for other private sectors to grow organic and a lot of safe vegetables. Even though now, the production cost is about 80 satang each, but in the future, which he is in the process of applying for a patent for commercial production, it will reduce the cost of production. It will be another option for agriculturists to have more environmentally friendly farms.”
