Total Disrespect!

[IanForbes]

Great story, dumball. A little bit can go a long way. Today is garbage day and I didn't even have anything to put out... only two empty paper milk containers and some egg shells that I could probably burn in the stove anyway. And, that's for a week of home cooking.

[phetaroi]

If there was a "clean up the rubbish" environmental group in Bangkok, I'd join.

[cyb]

I saw a great story recently on an American news show on sea gypsies that live on islands near the border with Burma and Thailand. Some are Burmese and some are Thai. They are the Moken. It was absolutely fascinating. They're like hilltribes with their own language except they don't live in the hilly jungles, but on the sea. They live a life with no need for money, although the Thai government is stupidly affecting their unique culture by trying to get them to make trinkets for tourists and trying to put them in permanent settlements. This will hurt them, not help them. Anyway, I doubt they dumped all that trash on the land.

I fail to see what this post has to do with the op

[TheGoodDoctor]

Yucky.

[flyinthailand]

is there a graphic designer who could create something like : dont trash thailand! and a nice provocative draw.

i will post that in front of my house and in front of shops in my area.

[Donnyboy]

i agree, it starts at educaton

in nz its become part of our culture and tourism campaign

Edited October 17, 2009 by Donnyboy

[StatlerandWaldorf]

I once helped an older Thai woman transport her daughter and grandchildren gack up north because she could live far better there an it would be better environment for the children , her house and yard were a mess as was the whole soi . I asked if I could stay for a while and clean things up a little , the house was easily done with two women , so I started in on the yard piling up debri of all kinds . I got the neighbors husband to take it in his truck to a dump for a few Baht(?) then had the yard around the house cemented , this carried on to a wall between the two homes , then a couple of flower boxes , a cemented ditch for drainage etc , I even got out into the cement road and cleaned it and the accompanying ditch on the other side of the road . The children started to come up and play their 'Throw the flip-flop 'game etc in our nice clean section of road , even started to practise their English , but the litter they left behind earned them a small talking to , translated by the lady of the house . There was a bin outside of the fence in which they were instructed to place ALL of their garbage and if they saw anyone throw any on the floor to point out the bin to them , within a week the whole street became clear of debri , the chidren were so proud of themselves .

No , it does not take much effort to achieve a simple thing like teaching by example , so who else has made this kind of small effort and when are the rest of you going to '' Çhip-in' and stop just bloody whining ? Oh , and that includes the Thaiwise who find it easier to join the status-quo just to be a REAL Thai .

After a songkran festival in my wife's village all the grounds around the temple were a right mess. I gave some plastic bags to the kids and paid 10 baht to each one who could bring back a bag full of rubbish from the grounds. Cost me a couple of hundred baht but the place had never been so clean.

Plastic bags are a big problem but of course they blow away in the wind and become someone elses problem.

A big thanks to 7-11's for double and triple bagging everything and then giving you a plastic bag to put your plastic bag in. I often take things out of the plastic bags, give them back and put the items in my own 15 year old bag.

[Minke]

Alright bear with me here, I am no expert on sociology but I am a marine biologist with a background in resource management. Living in Thailand I have spent a bit of time thinking about the littering phenomenon.

This is my opinion:

Generations/Decades ago, "litter materials" were of non-plastic origin. Snackies were in paper, banana leaf, gadgets were metal etc you get the picture: degradable materials that after you huck it on the ground, off the back of your motorbike, over your neighbor's fence, it was gone anyways by the natural processes of detritivours, oxidation, and bacteria and dogs and whatnot. No reason to bother with it, it will go away on its own given a little time and a few critters.

With the relatively recent advent of plastic covering plastic covering another layer of plastic and a finally paper for a single candy/pair of nail clippers/1-2-3 calling card/etc, the cultural habit of just chucking on the ground the junk you don't want to think about because you don't need... endures. And obviously as we can ALL see: this junk persists due to relatively new materials that don't just break down and get out of sight and out of mind in a matter of months/years.

This seems to me to be an issue of cultural habits being out of sync with current materials. I admit this is judgemental and you can all rip me a new bunghole if it makes you feel better but I am going to come out and say it : The Thai folks need to get their heads wrapped around the fact that a lot of this new junk isn't going away in their lifetime, their childrens' lifetime and in the case of some of these litter materials their CHILDRENS' childrens' lifetimes. Time to get with 2009 and start implementing proper waste management in behavior and infrastructure. Ignoring it isn't making it go away, only the glacial rate of UV degregation is going to do anything about their out-of-date habit of chucking what they don't want to bother thinking about.

Environmental concern and value for nature is a luxury of relatively wealthy nations with time and money to think about these things. Hopefully it will come here soon, but I doubt it will be in our lifetimes. The environmental issues in Thailand run far deeper than the superficial sight of 7-11 bags glazing the roadsides. But the mindset change that would result in Thais doing something about stuff as simple as litter and habits will eventually lead to solving other more pressing environmental issues outside the scope of this thread. And let's face it, for all of our upturned-noses and pontification: our countries at one time were no better until the government and the people got with the program.

/rant over

EDIT: Even though it's a drop in the ocean, what we can do is set the example to our Thai comrades. Don't sell out to the attitude that 'oh well they all do it so <deleted> eh?' Don't litter yourself, make a bit of a show of making sure you keep your rubbish in hand until you find that rare and elusive trash can. Pull the plastic sleeve off your pack of smokes, twist off the cherry of your cigarette and put the butt in there, and dump it when you find that trash can. Mai ow tUNG (no want plastic bag). And if they give you a quizzy look explain you don't want to make Thailand ugly by throwing it on the ground. Maybe the seed will sink in. Maybe not. But it's worth a shot.

/okay rant really over. promise.

Edited October 17, 2009 by Minke

[hughben]

How often to Bin Lorrys/Garbage trucks collect rubbish?

Stores should start charging for bags.

[dumball]

Maybe , just maybe , this thread could become very productive and show a good learning curve to Thai in general , if all the posters on TV put in just a small effort as it is now noted some have already done , each and every one of our suroundings could improve for the benefit of all concerned . Attitude and teaching by example can and does go much deeper than all and any procrastination , should ALL farang cease as of today , throwing their garbage around and instead(as has been noted here) make a display of putting it in a plastic bag you keep in your pocket for just that purpose , it could rub off , but please do not hold your breath too long .

[AleG]

A directly localised version, with You Know Who instead of the indian (since he does important work in related fields) would be so shockingly powerfull that it would far out-match the original indian ad.

Thais are so proud of their country and yet the mayority treats it like a dumpster, respect your country, don't pollute. How's that for a campaign slogan?

Yeah, that's why we always put up barbed wire fences with plenty of no-littering signs. Simple, cheap, and surprisingly effective. Too lazy to heave their waste an extra meter high.

I've seen a girl cross a street, right past a garbage can, swing the garbage bag she was carrying and send it in a ballistic trajectory over the 2m barbed wire fence, into the empty plot on the other side.

[IMA_FARANG]

Littering and spoiling the environment is a world wide phenomenon

Not in Europe it isn't.

Any road trip in Thailand is accompanied by a continuous stream of litter along the sides of the road,

You could eat your dinner off the hard shoulder of the M25 or M1 in England

and the roadsides in Sweden are so clean you can perform open heart surgery on the side of them. Now flame me.

BTW Terry you're not going against your holy vows and complaining are you?

Ever been to Crete...the 'holiday" destination of Europe in the Med. Just outside my house there used to be a rubbish bin. When was full it is the responsibility of the local government to empty it. The truck comes around about every 3 days to remove the rubbish. If it is full the locals simply place the new trash outside the bin. By the 3rd day trash is piled up to the top of the bin outside the bin. The local dogs get into it at night and it is scattered all around the area.

Why don't the locals pick it up themselves? Because there is a "government" work force to pick it up. So why should they do it, it's not their job,is it?

The exact same attitude in Thailand. The government is crap in Thailand, so why should a poor Thai help them, especially since they will never get any thanks from the government. Sure that's a silly attitude, but it is what a lot of Thais feel. I know from first hand experience with my Thai family.

And that's why no one takes the responsibility to pick up the trash.

And by the way, my Thai wife lives in a house in a Thai housing area. If someone is leaving trash outside their house, the neighborhood will talk about it. They will try to 'shame" the person involved until they clean up ther trash. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

[maccaroni man]

I walk the dogs along what used to be a green field, now some Thai builders are dumping their <deleted> all over it! Discrace! Do Thai people respect and love their green and pleasant land??? I thought they did!

I feel sick to the bloody bone about seeing plastic bags, concrete, loads of crap strewn all over a once pleasant strip of land. Something should be done about it!

To any Government Officials reading, please pm me in order to proceed with action.

that looks like what they did to some of my land in hua hin, of course that was after they cut down what ever trees they wanted

[Heng]

A directly localised version, with You Know Who instead of the indian (since he does important work in related fields) would be so shockingly powerfull that it would far out-match the original indian ad.

Thais are so proud of their country and yet the mayority treats it like a dumpster, respect your country, don't pollute. How's that for a campaign slogan?

Yeah, that's why we always put up barbed wire fences with plenty of no-littering signs. Simple, cheap, and surprisingly effective. Too lazy to heave their waste an extra meter high.

I've seen a girl cross a street, right past a garbage can, swing the garbage bag she was carrying and send it in a ballistic trajectory over the 2m barbed wire fence, into the empty plot on the other side.

Yeah, we get those little ballistic bundles as well, not a huge issue. Light and can be cleared up with local labor for a few hundred Baht and usually within a few minutes or hours. The more annoying dumping is construction waste: broken bricks/tiles/toilets/etc... in addition to all of the random light waste. Usually the fences are enough to deter that kind of heavier dumping.

[submaniac]

A directly localised version, with You Know Who instead of the indian (since he does important work in related fields) would be so shockingly powerfull that it would far out-match the original indian ad.

Actually there is already a campaign featuring you-know-who. The beaches on Pattaya have signs on them saying "Keep clean for the King". And guess what? It appears to be working. I remember going to Pattaya in the 1990's and the beaches were a mess (I couldn't imagine swimming in that). Now they're actually clean (yes they could be cleaner but a much better improvement from years ago).