Trash Burning In Rural Thailand

[Radar501]

We live outside of the nearest village & used to have no garbage collection. Wife convinced the Aw-Baw-Thaw to include the nearest villages in their collection routes, & include our house too. Before that, after recycling most, we were left with about 1 supermarket bag of trash a week, which every month we took to in-laws village where there was collection.

One supermarket bag of household rubbish per week (after recycling) is very frugal. Congrats on your very small environmental footstep.

[Semper]

Put your stuff in a nice bag and go shopping, leaving the bag visible on the back of your truck. (We all drive trucks, don't we?). After one hour it will be gone. God I feel a trifle jaded sometimes...

You must have an ample supply of "nice bags", do you buy them in bulk?

[weegee]

Put your stuff in a nice bag and go shopping, leaving the bag visible on the back of your truck. (We all drive trucks, don't we?). After one hour it will be gone. God I feel a trifle jaded sometimes...

WHY BUY!!!!! you can pick up any amount of plastic bags lying around everwhere...

You must have an ample supply of "nice bags", do you buy them in bulk?

[MESmith]

We live outside of the nearest village & used to have no garbage collection. Wife convinced the Aw-Baw-Thaw to include the nearest villages in their collection routes, & include our house too. Before that, after recycling most, we were left with about 1 supermarket bag of trash a week, which every month we took to in-laws village where there was collection.

One supermarket bag of household rubbish per week (after recycling) is very frugal. Congrats on your very small environmental footstep.

That was for a family of 4. Nearly everything can be recycled or composted. Try it

[nidieunimaitre]

Put your stuff in a nice bag and go shopping, leaving the bag visible on the back of your truck. (We all drive trucks, don't we?). After one hour it will be gone. God I feel a trifle jaded sometimes...

That would not work in Chanthaburi.

Here you leave your shopping bags on your truck, your helmet on your bike. In the middle of town.

And about garbage collection: what happens with collected garbage? The government will burn it or pile it up somewhere, but yeah, that will not be in your backyard, so problem solved?

I burn it / bury it myself. No need for garbage collection.

Edited February 7, 2013 by nidieunimaitre

[charlesmanson]

Really enjoyed this discussion and learned a lot from it. Thank you all.

Here is what has happened here since I last wrote.

I made a deal with the OBT.

I offered to pay the initial cost of the garbage cans and the monthly fees for garbage pickup for every house in moo 1 and moo 3 (my neighborhood) that do not now have garbage cans. as this added up to a bit of money the OBT became very interested and so we were able to insert another clause into the deal and that is that the OBT would make some effort to impress upon my neighbors that the smoke from trash fires is harmful to their health and to the health of their children. they have done that. the good news is that acrid smoke generation in the village has gone down perhaps by 90% most of the remainder being fires needed to keep mosquitoes off of the cattle and to make charcoal.

of course, as many of you have noted, the trash pickup is simply a process of collecting the trash and burning it elsewhere. although that smoke is too far from our house to be a big problem for us personally, i am now working with a high profile neighbor (retired army officer) and the OBT to secure some funding for an incinerator at the burn site. the OBT is interested and i have made a generous contribution to the incinerator fund. so it looks like my retirement has been salvaged for now - a little poorer, fewer golf days, fewer trips to canada, etc - but a more comfortable home life. :-)

i think what i learned from this experience is that if you run into problems in thailand the wrong thing to do is to be confrontational and the easy way out is to make a deal.

[HeijoshinCool]

Really enjoyed this discussion and learned a lot from it. Thank you all.

Here is what has happened here since I last wrote.

I made a deal with the OBT.

I offered to pay the initial cost of the garbage cans and the monthly fees for garbage pickup for every house in moo 1 and moo 3 (my neighborhood) that do not now have garbage cans. as this added up to a bit of money the OBT became very interested and so we were able to insert another clause into the deal and that is that the OBT would make some effort to impress upon my neighbors that the smoke from trash fires is harmful to their health and to the health of their children. they have done that. the good news is that acrid smoke generation in the village has gone down perhaps by 90% most of the remainder being fires needed to keep mosquitoes off of the cattle and to make charcoal.

of course, as many of you have noted, the trash pickup is simply a process of collecting the trash and burning it elsewhere. although that smoke is too far from our house to be a big problem for us personally, i am now working with a high profile neighbor (retired army officer) and the OBT to secure some funding for an incinerator at the burn site. the OBT is interested and i have made a generous contribution to the incinerator fund. so it looks like my retirement has been salvaged for now - a little poorer, fewer golf days, fewer trips to canada, etc - but a more comfortable home life. :-)

i think what i learned from this experience is that if you run into problems in thailand the wrong thing to do is to be confrontational and the easy way out is to make a deal.

Cool. Someone who updates. Thanks.

How about another in about six months?

[weegee]

Updates....remember the trouble i went to to clean up around the village I am in???....(the thread "Amazing It works")...well it lasted about a year, because i virtually done the lot for them....they faded away after a few months.

I have ceased to do anything now, as one wonderful local gentleman here, stole my spare parts and money for replacement parts for the machine i specificly bought to help them.....Not impressed

[boosta]

If the villagers valued a clean environment then they would go to the trouble to make it happen, it's not like they lack the ability, just a question of their priorities, many people seem happy to live in what looks a rubbish tip, UP TO THEM, they're not going to change their preferences just because we show up in the neighborhood.

[weegee]

@Boosta

True...but...If they have never seen, or been shown the differences in the first place, of course they will never change. Thats how the world evolves doesnt it?

[justben]

Around my place the municipality sells 4 bags per household per month and a collector shows up randomly sometime during the month. You have to drive quite a ways to get these bags and sometimes the collector will pick up just two of your four bags. Burning trash here is not allowed but I dont see what choice residents are left with. A nearby tambon I lived was even worse and sometimes they would not even reach the last few houses in their zone. But I recently found out if you give the collector money he will collect any bag you throw out there. The problem is to actually "catch" these collectors.. being elusive and all

[wigantojapan]

we have bins all over the village of 200 people. Truck collection twice a week ,but still the locals burn their garden and orchard waste.

Compost holding area has been constructed in the village but even the locals who work the compost heap burn their waste and don't take it to the compost heap

I collected around 100 kg of lychee garden waste from only 1 household and I will announce next time I am back that I am available to take their waste

The other week I told the woman at the back of my land to stop burning ,she was happy to inform me that she was aware that it was bad for health and she did stop

.10 minutes later the smell of smoke was everywhere.

There is a bin 2 minutes from her house and the compost heap is only 5 minutes

She has a 10 year old niece who often coughs quite vigorously ,but the aunt still burns.

[boosta]

@Boosta

True...but...If they have never seen, or been shown the differences in the first place, of course they will never change. Thats how the world evolves doesnt it?

-

Charter a flight to take the villagers to Switzerland, might drive the point home.

Then again might not, strange foreign habits, slim chance of overcoming local ones of centuries.

Rent don't buy is my motto. . .

[wigantojapan]

@Boosta

True...but...If they have never seen, or been shown the differences in the first place, of course they will never change. Thats how the world evolves doesnt it?

-

Charter a flight to take the villagers to Switzerland, might drive the point home.

Then again might not, strange foreign habits, slim chance of overcoming local ones of centuries.

Rent don't buy is my motto. . .

I'm certainly happy that I didn't build a more permanent solid house knowing what I know now and with all the information on here about the burning and pollution levels in the mountains I for one am still amazed that one wants to come here to live long term

Locking yourself in well sealed homes for days ,months on end is not my idea of a quality life.

, The locals will never change in my life time for sure in my area at least there isn't any hope of an enforcement either

[stoneyboy]

It just wouldn't be the same if the air wasn't filled with black acrid pungent smelling smoke at 5pm,after all how would I know it was time to crack open a can of beer.

[stoneyboy]

And on a happier note I do enjoy sweeping the black charred remains of Tesco Lotus bags from my tiled patio on a daily basis it gives me something to do.

[kevvy]

Updates....remember the trouble i went to to clean up around the village I am in???....(the thread "Amazing It works")...well it lasted about a year, because i virtually done the lot for them....they faded away after a few months.

I have ceased to do anything now, as one wonderful local gentleman here, stole my spare parts and money for replacement parts for the machine i specificly bought to help them.....Not impressed

no wonder we get grumpy ...

[HeijoshinCool]

Updates....remember the trouble i went to to clean up around the village I am in???....(the thread "Amazing It works")...well it lasted about a year, because i virtually done the lot for them....they faded away after a few months.

I have ceased to do anything now, as one wonderful local gentleman here, stole my spare parts and money for replacement parts for the machine i specificly bought to help them.....Not impressed

And that, Mr Weegee, is exactly why I didn't offer congratulations just yet, and asked for the update.

Sorry for your bad results. Hopefully others will learn from it.

[thaibeachlovers]

provide big trash cans to your neighbors, provide plastic bags then pick up the trash weekly or twice a week for free from them. Or pay someone to pick up the trash.

Couldn't say it better myself. There's no point kicking against the pricks in LOS, but that would solve the problem. The OP built the dream home, what's a few baht more for a smoke free environment?

[thaibeachlovers]

we have bins all over the village of 200 people. Truck collection twice a week ,but still the locals burn their garden and orchard waste.

Compost holding area has been constructed in the village but even the locals who work the compost heap burn their waste and don't take it to the compost heap

I collected around 100 kg of lychee garden waste from only 1 household and I will announce next time I am back that I am available to take their waste

The other week I told the woman at the back of my land to stop burning ,she was happy to inform me that she was aware that it was bad for health and she did stop

.10 minutes later the smell of smoke was everywhere.

There is a bin 2 minutes from her house and the compost heap is only 5 minutes

She has a 10 year old niece who often coughs quite vigorously ,but the aunt still burns.

Are you actually expecting her to change her ways? Welcome to LOS, LOL!

[isawasnake]

I thought burning huge piles of debris and trash was the most exciting part of living in Issan. I'd put fishing in the fished out tributaries all day to catch one 8 cm fish while using 60 baht worth of bait was a close second. Asking the locals who asked me for ten baht the previous day if they could spare ten baht was a distant third.

[trainman34014]

Rode my bike through three local village's this morning and counted 14 rubbish fires and two more fires lit by farmers to clear undergrowth. That's the most i have seen on any one morning in five and a half years, 3-4 is the normal count, so things aren't improving, they are getting worse.