and 61% plan to consume shark fin in the future. More than 100 Bangkok restaurants serve shark fin soup Waste management When Thailand was a rural, agrarian society, garbage was of no concern as everything was made of natural products such as banana leaves. Waste could be discarded to decompose naturally. Today, according to one observer, "...it would not be an exaggeration to say that every locality in the country is...mired in its own garbage." Thailand's Pollution Control Department (PCD) estimates that each Thai produces a daily average of 1.15 kg of solid waste, amounting to over 73,000 tonnes daily nationwide. According to Interior Ministry statistics, refuse nationwide in 2016 amounted to 27 million tonnes, up about 0.7% from the previous year. Of this, 4.2 million tonnes was generated in Bangkok. Thailand had 2,490 dump sites in 2014, but only 466 of them were of sanitary landfill caliber. Twenty-eight million tonnes of waste were left unprocessed. Bangkok's canals are awash in sewage, but also serve as dump sites. After recent severe flooding, tonnes of refuse blocked water gates, preventing drainage. At one water gate, more than five tonnes of debris had accumulated, consisting of everything from everyday consumer product waste to large items such as mattresses and furniture. Organic waste The PCD estimates that in 2017 organic waste collected by municipalities across Thailand accounted for nearly two-thirds of the country's total waste output: a reported 7.6 million tonnes— 64%—of the refuse collected was organic waste. It is thought that a significant portion of this waste is not merely fruit and vegetable peelings, but edible surplus food. This in a nation where 400,000 to 600,000 children may be undernourished due to poverty, yet ten percent of all children are obese. Prevailing attitudes do not encompass composting or waste sorting: 64 percent of the Thai population do not sort their rubbish according to one study. Plastic waste , Thailand generated two million tonnes of plastic waste. One quarter of that (500,000 tonnes) is reused. Thais throw away 45 billion single-use plastic bags per year, 12% of all household waste. Wet markets are the source of 18 billion plastic bags. Grocery and department stores each account for 13.5 billion bags. Thailand's Pollution Control Department (PCD) estimates that plastic waste in the country is increasing at an annual rate of 12%, or around two million tonnes per year. And yet, Thailand imported 480,000 tonnes