A friend of mine upon visiting Bangkok recently, commented upon how clean it was. Where he was staying in the high-end tourist area of upper Suk, it is. However, get into real Thailand and sadly its a very different picture.
Despite a huge number of bins and a three-times a week home trash collection, there is litter everywhere and pop-up roadside 'tips' like this one abound at the edges of the many vacant plots which you can find all around the suburbs.
This seems to be the final resting place for unwanted, or perhaps not-working 'spirit houses' and notice the sign that says "No Tipping. 2000 baht fine"!
It's sad really that despite the local 'councils' excellent service for domestic waste, there are no locally run 'tips' or 'Waste Management Centres' as they now seem to be rather grandly known as in the UK. These are excellent facilities we have where you can take your old, unwanted, broken junk or garden waste and even your DIY detritus and dust and leave it in well sorted separate bins and skips. Some of these centres even have shops where they sell reusable stuff like old bikes and furniture. They are clean (well, as clean as a tip can be!) well organised and free. The sites being run in many cases as joint ventures between private business and local authority.
A Waste Management Centre in Leicester. Photo credit to Leicestershire County Council.
The upside to this is of course the amount of waste that gets recycled has increased dramatically in the last few years. My Mum's local council, Wakefield, report that they are now recycling over 50% of household waste, up from 40% in 2011. Excellent but still a long way to go. There is still an awfully large amount of waste going into landfill.
So, back to Thailand....
...and I'm happy to say it's not all bad news. More for the want of money than regards to the environment, recycling is big business here and a means of financial support for many of Thailands poorest citizens, in many cases, the elderly.
Day and night people scour the streets looking for trash that can be sold to the local recycling centre. Glass bottles, plastic bottles, metal, cardboard and tin cans are all fair game and for many, there is no visible embarrassment at sifting in the bins outside the many 7/11s which often provide fruitful pickings. The eve of bin day sees more frenetic activity as people put out their sacks of trash for the binman. Personally, I have a separate sack for recycleables and leave it open outside the gate. I never see anyone take it, but guaranteed it has gone within the hour!
Dealing with the Devil
In this case, the old fella with the motortricycle thingy is a common sight in my area and seems to have a deal with the local 7/11 for their cardboard. When I took these pics, I noticed him weighing it under the supervision of the franchise owner which is a little pathetic but there you go. No doubt they split the proceeds.
After that, its off to the recycling centre! I'm sorry to say I can't find out how much the weigh-in value of all this booty is. I guess luckily, I don't know anyone who collects and sells this stuff. It must of course be worth their while however.
This is the local weigh it in recycling centre!
Sacks of bottles and cubes of cans awaiting their fate!
Now of course, a kind of moral and environmental dichotomy exists here. The recycling takes place because there is a personal financial requirement for it to do so and if there weren't, perhaps there wouldn't be the feeling of moral responsibility to do it anyway. In the UK, recycling was forced upon people by local councils insisting on them sorting their rubbish into different bins. I question whether this is any better than Thais doing it simply for cash from an ethical point of view.
I guess at the end of the day, its about educating people to take care of the planet for the sake of its very survival for future generations and of course, campaigns like the excellent 
The fact that this has resulted in massively improved rates of recycling all over the world is a good thing, however it has been achieved.
As for the old fella and his motor tricycle? He arrived a few minutes too late and they'd closed for lunch, but as he so perfectly demonstrates, recycled cardboard has other uses.........
Goodnight ;-)
The exact location of the recycling centre has been uploaded to
