Isara's Thailand Trash Clean-up '08

[Ming]

Thank you for cleaning up the trash Terri and Pk. That area is in front of my office. 
It was a hot day but you guy  working hard to clean it.  Nice job!

[thartley]

I wonder where we will strike next?     The park?  The river by Friendship Bridge? 

[PK]

We went again to the water canal today to do some more cleaning-up. There's been a lot of rain lately so there was some more trash that had flowed to the one area we're focusing on. But the good news is there was A LOT less trash than before. We picked up 4 trash bags of junk last week, but only one trash bag today.

[thartley]

Just so you all know, I went by the canal earlier this week and it looked as clean as when we left it.     


I will go back over there tomorrow and snap a pic real quick to post.  If its even possible, it was even cleaner than when we left it.

Thank you canal people for taking care to keep it clean!

[Ginafish]

SwEET! I blogged about how Isara now has more money for trash bags. Maybe there is more cleaning in the future??

[KitKat]

This is very good news, thank thartley for checking on the canal.   This is very encouraging.  There have been rains too, so trash could have washed down the canal from a location farther up.   This means many more people are aware of keeping the canal clean.   Word spreads quickly in Nongkhai, WHOHOO!! 
All those posters attached to the tuk-tuks made a huge impact!   

[PK]

Those posters are still on A LOT of tuk tuks. I think some people will keep them even after the ink fades. lol

[Ming]

Sure,they will Pk. They're too lazy to take them of. lol

I mean they have no reason to take them of you know free sign and that make them look like they're care so just keep it.

We still have some more signs that we can soon put them out again

[thartley]

Do we still have some plastic ties strips?  We could stand out in front of the ILC again and hand them out to passing tuk tuks this week.   

[Ming]

Yes, We still have some. Good idea Thartley!!

[thartley]

Ya'll want to hand some out this weekend?

[Ming]

No question, Let's do it this weekend!

[acm11]

Hey first lets acknowledge this is not exclusively a thai problem or for matter a developing world problem. having been living in dublin for past 18 months am toatlly surprised by level of littering. Despite tourism revenue being very important here.

Australia where i grew up is not without its litter problems either. however an Annual ' Clean Up Australia Day' has been very sucessful over last twenty years in mobilising volunteers to remove litter from creeks, valleys and other areas that have become dilapidated. And has had great media coverage.

however i believe most important cultural change is achieved by educating primary aged children that littering is unacceptable from both asethtic point of view and environmental grounds. Personally i remember stigma attached to being caught littereing when i was in primary schools and this being backed up by my parents actions. I cannot understand the lacksidaiscal attitude amongst dublin youth to littering and the reflection of this in wider irish society to dunping rubbish illegally. I believ the only way to make real long term lasting change is not in collecting litter but in changing attitutdes so that litter is not dumped irresponsibly in the first place.

Not that i am agreat fan of it but the 'Tidy towns' innitative has had some success in countries like australia and ireland where locaowns compete annually to be named 'tidy town' based  on civic beauty and lack of litter.

[Na Kalasindhu]

Wow !!
Great things have done again.
I miss ILC and Nongkhai very much

[PK]

I agree 100%, Anna. And thanks for the suggestions and input. Of course we hope you chose Isara, but I am sure that no matter where you end up volunteering you're going to provide the community with some valuable help.

Isara has been teaching the students about the trash problem and what they can do to fix it. We go to the local schools and, of course, we teach the students at the ILC.  Unfortunately, most Thais don't even see the trash (I'll point at a bag on the ground and they still won't see it) and still others don't think it's a problem because, in their culture, there never are any problems. In their minds it's meant to be that way and there's nothing they can do about it.  "Just don't worry about it." as I'm often told. Which is fine about some issues, but not about plastic, which is a problem that will never go away.

It's mainly the adults who are the biggest hurdle. The children are open to new ideas, but the adults have always thrown trash on the ground so its a bad habit that they don't see any benefit in breaking. So no matter how much we teach the children we need the adults to reinforce what we've taught. But they're not. Teachers rarely say anything to students who throw trash on the ground and parents will actually tell their kids just to throw the trash on the ground. The other day I went to 7-11 and saw two dozen students outside. They had just bought some candy and were outside talking with their teachers. Every one of them threw their trash on the ground, even though there was a trash bin a few feet away, and the teachers didn't say anything. Not one to turn a blind eye, I walked up and started picking up their trash (shame sometimes snaps people into shape). When they saw the foreigner picking up their trash the teachers told their students to help and in about 30 seconds the whole area was cleaned. Even some tuk tuk drivers nearby gave us the thumbs up. lol

Other than teaching the children to throw trash in the bins, we have now decided to go to the source of the problem. The plastic bags! We are going to start encouraging the local 7-11s and Tesco/Lotus to start giving canvas bags to their best customers and reward them for using the canvas bags on return visits (discounts). That way the plastic bags will never have an opportunity to become trash.

It will not be an easy task (businesses are tough to convince) and we can use all the help we can get!  It's very easy to think of ways to fix a problem (Ex: The Adopt a Mile program worked in the US so it should work here.) but some times the local culture doesn't accept our ideas, no matter how logical they are to us. To get things done over here you need to have local solutions (as Anna said). It might not be the way we would do it, but it works for them. And the end result is what's important.

PK