That was Silke Helfrich’s life, and that is what it will remain. Now we are grieving her, our staff member of many years, our colleague, our friend. We are all shaken that Silke was fatally injured on 10 November. She was torn from this world. Her wonderful work will remain with us and inspire us. We will treasure and promote it. We extend our deep sympathy to her family.

Despite the Thai government’s ban of four more types of single-use plastics in 2022, up to 250,000 tonnes of imported plastic waste from other nations continues to flow into the country annually through the international plastic waste trade. Thailand is trying to stay the course with further efforts to mitigate plastic pollution, but there are still challenges in waste sorting and collection on the ground.