Thread: Garbage and Junk in Thailand

I've got the queen living down the road so I think any fly tippers really would be executed.

There is an area in the village (by the river), where people dump their housewaste and those who live there complain about it.
Problem is, there is no garbage collection around here, I've reluctantly taken up the habit of burning waste.

I also collect a bucket full of plastic bags, bottles and other rubbish out of the stream which crosses our land everyday. It used to annoy me, now I enjoy the exercise and playing in the water with the ducks.

My local rag - the Phuket Gazette - has been running a series of articles each week on the rubbish in Phuket:



This one is near where I live. No, I didn't do it. The worst people are clearly the Thais. Sorry all you Thaiophiles, but you know it's true. Not so long ago they used to throw away their food wrapped in banana leaves: no problem. Now it's wrapped in plastic: big problem.

The worst ones are the kids. If you drive around Rhajabhat University, you will see kids on bikes eating their food and then throwing away the rubbish into the grass verge. They don't care, they don't know it's wrong, they haven't been educated, they are lazy.

At the beach I see Thais leaving all their rubbish on the sand. They just walk away from empty bottles, plastic food trays, etc. I - and most foreigners that I see - always put their rubbish back in the plastic bag that it came from and then drop it in the (few) bins along the beach roads.

Thai people? It's not their beach, it's not their soi, it's not their problem.

Of course, if you're a farang in Bangkok and drop your ciggy stub on the pavement... 2,000 baht or jail!!

About 10 years ago my wife and I were in her town of Nakhon Phanom walking along the river. The bank was absolutely covered with trash. Mostly plastic bags filled with more plactic bags.

She was carrying such a bag and was going to throw it in with the rest. I told her, "Don't you dare, there's a trash can just up ahead." So we walked 10 more feet and she just let it fly into the pile of trash on the bank.

Over much protesting, I made her climb down and get it and then put it in the trash can which wasn't that much farther away. Oh, she was pissed off!

But nowadays, she's more 'educated' and holds onto the trash until she can put it in a bin. So there is hope for the Thais.

Originally Posted by BillyZ

... I made her climb down and get it and then put it in the trash can which wasn't that much farther away. Oh, she was pissed off! ....

Brave man! Well done! All I did was drive up to a bin so that the g/f could lean out of the window and drop the rubbish into it. I wouldn't dare suggest she actually walked over to the bin...

We have a very good garbage collection service in Bangkok, but you have to pay for it. I have paid for a year's collection and have a bin outside my gates which is emptied about three times a week.

Everyone else in my small soi uses my garbage. It doesnt bother me because it is emptied so often it is hardly ever full, but they just throw the garbage at it and often there are plastic bags and papers in my little front garden outside the gates.

They see me pick it up (and a lot of other stuff that has been dropped int he soi proper) every time I come outside, but next day, it will be just the same.

GoW is pretty good about litter. I've never seen her drop any and she picks up stuff that one of the local monkeys has thoughtlessly discarded.

I think she drives around collecting litter too. The inside of her car looks like a skip.