Islands full of plastic in the Gulf of Thailand
They are becoming more and more common: the so-called waste islands. This time discovered off the coast of Koh Talu in the Gulf of Thailand. The island is about a kilometer long and consists of plastic bags, bottles and Styrofoam. Snorkelers saw the pile of rubbish floating and alerted the Siam Marine Rehabilitation Foundation.
Secretary-General Paopipat says the waste could damage the reefs in the shallows around Koh Talu Island and will contaminate the beach when the rubbish washes up. The Marine and Coastal Resources Department has pledged to clean up the floating waste island.
In February, such an island was also discovered. Authorities believe it was two months old and was made up of debris carried to the sea after flooding in the southern provinces.
Source: Bangkok Post
About this blogger
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Known as Khun Peter (62), lives alternately in Apeldoorn and Pattaya. In a relationship with Kanchana for 14 years. Not yet retired, have my own company, something with insurance. Crazy about animals, especially dogs and music.
Enough hobbies, but unfortunately little time: writing for Thailandblog, fitness, health and nutrition, shooting sports, chatting with friends and some other oddities.
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It's a big mess everywhere there anyway. A relative owned a restaurant in southern Thailand. Especially after a strong wind the beach was littered with toothbrushes, broken lamps from fishing boats, rotten wood, enemas, all kinds of plastic jars, disposable plates and cutlery Styrofoam etc etc etc. I even helped to burn it. Digging a big hole in the sand and thundering into it was also a method. Didn't help anything. 1 storm and the beach was full again. Near Koh Samet I once got stuck with a canoe in a sea of plastic.
What strikes me is that you hardly see this kind of smear on Dutch coasts anymore. I think even in less environmentally conscious times they never made such a mess like the Thais.
It is indeed sad… the beaches near Koh Samet are getting a lot of rubbish from the sea every day.
You will find everything from household waste to empty vials and syringes with a needle.
Extremely dangerous if you walk barefoot on the beach. Apparently Koh Samet has a contract whereby the majestic waste would be transported by ship to a landfill on the mainland…I think they just throw the whole mess overboard…They should send the police over for that…Or has they here too dark interests again?
Something urgently needs to change in the culture of the Thai.
We were in Koh Lanta this year and you see the garbage along the roads and beaches increasing, which is a shame. Not to mention the plastic they just burn everywhere. And the sewers that just run into the sea on the beach…
When entering the island, every tourist has to make a small contribution to keep the island clean, so to speak. They would be better off increasing this contribution and financing staff to clean up and recycle waste along the roads every day.
Not only the Thais make the mess. I recently read an article stating that Thailand, China, Vietnam and Indonesia are responsible for about 60 percent of all plastic floating in the world's oceans. Scandalous!
Look around you in Thailand (and the rest of Asia:): everything beyond arm's length no longer interests anyone. Plastic is fluttering everywhere.
And then be surprised to see that ALL marine life, and ALSO the sea salt, is spoiled with microplastics.
zie http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i43/Tiny-Bits-Plastic-Found-Table.html
Well, most Thais dump everything they can't use anymore where they find out they don't want it anymore.
The southern provinces in particular are becoming an ever-increasing waste mountain. They apparently don't care that their own living environment becomes seriously polluted and looks like a rubbish dump.
They don't seem to think at all that other creatures, such as fish, corals, turtles and birds also suffer from this. If only they lost it by then.
Unfortunately, that is still the case in many countries around the world. Only in Europe, the USA and Australia did people seem to be slowly becoming more aware of their living environment. Unfortunately, it is also getting worse in Europe. The newcomers in particular are not aware that they no longer live on the rubbish dump they were used to at home, and they also dump everything where they want to dispose of it.
Governments should instruct the police to pay more attention to this instead of focusing on traffic fines. Not only in Thailand. All over the world.
We have just returned from our umpteenth holiday in Thailand and are (again) very shocked by the environmental pollution. Everywhere you go you will find junk, whether it is on the beach, inland or in the cities. People leave everything behind. Incomprehensible for a country with such a large holiday industry. If action is not taken quickly, this will also have an impact on tourism.
In addition to the environmental pollution, we also noticed, with exceptions, that you as a tourist are no longer as welcome as before. The proverbial friendliness and hospitality seems to have made way for tourists undressing and above all offering no service.
We will leave Thailand for now.
Thailand still has a long way to go with disposable plastic. When I was here for the first time in 1990 I was surprised that they even drank soft drinks from a plastic bag. Unfortunately nothing has changed, almost everything you buy is put in a plastic bag. All the "street food" is eaten from plastic plates with plastic cutlery and often also packed in polystyrene containers with, you guessed it, a plastic bag around it. All this and the Thai thunder but down mentality unfortunately causes plastic islands in the sea and waste plastic heaps all over this country. Unfortunately it is only getting worse, but the Thai government is doing nothing to make a change of mentality take place.
Thailand ranks 6th in marine pollution. At high tide, tons of plastic waste flows up the Chao Phraya River towards Bangkok. At low tide, the mountain of waste flows back towards the sea with even more plastic and waste from the city. A number of cleaning boats have now been purchased, which try to remove the dirt.
In a catamaran developed in Germany, large movable nets between the 2 hulls can remove dirt to a depth of 4 metres. It is not yet known when these will be used in Thailand. (250.000 Euro each)
The second problem remains for the time being, how is the collected waste processed?
Besides the fact that certain plastics are carcinogenic, seabirds and marine animals die every day from this junk!
Every change starts with…………… INFORMATION and EDUCATION!!!
So it will still take FF.
carl.
When I picked up some washed up plastic in Pattaya a few years ago and put it in a bin, I got some applause and approving comments.. If only everyone there made a little more (- small) effort to clean up the plastic.. And.. just like in Scheveningen at the end of a beach day with machines over the sand to collect the left behind waste would also help.
Bombard Tourist Authority Thailand with emails (possibly with photos).
https://www.tourismthailand.org/Send-Complaint
OF
E-MAIL: [email protected]
AND/OR
Bureau of Tourism Safety Standard, Ministry of Tourism and Sports.
+662 356 0650 Email Address: [email protected]
AND for reporting complaints in Patatya
dial 1337, then press 9 for English.
Refuse to sit on beach chairs near debris on the beach. Make this clear to the beach chair manager.
You shouldn't accept that you have to pass dirt before you can walk into the water.
Personally, I am not a person who will complain about the, in many eyes, lousy environmental mentality of our fellow man (not just the Thai).
I am more in favor of providing better information so that awareness will increase and therefore a better environmental situation will arise in the future ... so no criticism but constructive information.
I regularly live in the Isaan and try to encourage the people in the village to deal better with the waste…simply raise awareness…!! It is also difficult as no rubbish is collected in the village.. if I go to Tesco then I explain to the cashier I do not want plastic bags to do the shopping in…I know it is a drop in the ocean…but only so Can you make people aware? Also hope for better government information and starting up waste collection.!!
It strikes me that things are getting worse with the plastic mass in Thailand.
If you take the boat from Krabi to Poda island you will arrive at the beautiful sandy beaches.
You can also pay for this nature reserve. National Park !!!
If you take the trouble and walk on the beautiful beach, you suddenly see between the bushes
a huge garbage dump !! And that for a National Park.
They have no solution at all where to go with the junk.
More and more tourists, as soon as there is a new airport somewhere like Krabi.
Will it be 1 big fair. Pattaya , Koh Pipi , Phuket .. I don't need mass tourism anymore !!
Following on from the complaining regarding proposed measures on transporting people in traffic, you know them the family motorbikes and family trucks, fully loaded because one is poor and as such many can be transported, the environment is also such a worry child. At my moo job we pay for the collection of household waste and this is then neatly disposed of at waste processing locations. The Thai live in neighborhoods where they have to pay for collecting garbage, but they have no money for that, as they say themselves, but I estimate that there is also a great unwillingness to pay. The open burning of rubbish takes place with us in pattaya hinterland often at night. A few times a week I get up early (5 o'clock) to fulfill my running needs and almost every time I walk in the stench of waste incineration. Yes, you can miss some neighbors as a toothache. Sometimes I am lucky and the wind is favorable, but often not. But yes, this subject is very familiar to this blog and will remain so. A bright spot that can be found in the supermarkets are the shopping bags. Too bad they are not sold often. I have purchased and used several myself. Should do more.
Also one of the reasons that we are going back to the Netherlands, this country (Thailand) is changing in a negative sense. Thailand = Thailand no longer BUSY//PRESS/PRESS !!! The Diftar system in the Netherlands works fine, although not yet perfect.
This plastic problem is not only a Thai problem, but the Thai, like several countries in that region, do far too little about it.
Dumping rubbish and throwing stuff on the street should be fined much higher if you have to pay 2000 bth for a piece of paper to throw away and illegal dumping of rubbish 10,000 bth a la the Singapore model I think it will soon become a lot cleaner.
As long as there is no control, the dumping will continue.
Dumping prohibited signs in my area: 2000 Baht Fee.
The next day old mattresses and household goods!
For some time now, the 7-11 staff has been greeting me with a 'Good day'.
Could they change that to 'Hello, do you have your shopping bag with you'?
Go post for an hour at the exit of the 7-11 or similar.
And then go and stand inside for an hour and watch what the staff are doing.
As a customer you have to fight not to get a plastic bag, even if you hold up a cotton shopping bag and almost press it in the face of the saleswoman.
The customer is also not exempt. A plastic bag is given for every silly thing.
I have NEVER seen a Thai take the thing out and return the bag.
Shop personnel are responsible for a very large part of the appalling mountain of plastic waste.
My preliminary conclusion is (after 9 years) that the Thai is simply too stupid to make a connection between the plastic bags he gets in the store and the plastic waste problem.
critical thinking. Well, it's still difficult.
You don't have to go that far for a plastic island, 1 meter from your condo and there it already starts with small waste, 10 meters further where there is greenery, a waste island on the land, usually owned by an owner, but the owner does nothing about it because that costs money to remove everything, and from above they do nothing about it, because they say that is private land. Yes, they keep going. As long as there are no fines and no decent waste policy, nothing will come of it.
Was in Cambodia some time ago and drove by bus from Siem Raep to Pnom Penh.
What an unimaginable mess on the side of the road and all plastic. I've never seen anything like it in my life!
Admittedly it is a poor country, but it is also a question of mentality. Incidentally, this is generally an Asian problem. Tackle that filth with less corrupt politicians and a good plan. To continue in this way means destruction for all of us as well as for – parts of beautiful Asia – as far as it is not too late.