Clean up Thailand day .

[trubrit]

Haven't seen any around Ban Dung, Val - maybe we have traded off bins for booze.

I will ask the Ms Spratt tonight if they are available here. I assume they are emptied by hand, rather than the compactor trucks with the automated pick-up forks.

My comment re the soi dogs stands.

Agree with you on the dogs and yet I am a dog lover. Trouble in Thailand is not bad dogs bur bad owners . The refuse trucks are the compactor variety but the bins are hoisted by man power .

[trubrit]

I think His Majesties emphasise was actually on drugs rather than rubbish. Here in NWS though, we left it to the kids and the individual school to choose what they saw as a problem that needs attention .Most did actually go for a drug related theme and I can't remember a single entry about rubbish . That may be because we have an administration that already takes care of that . For example ,as well as the bins we have regular road sweepers parading the district and a street awareness scheme. This works by appointing one person in each area to be responsible for that area .I am the one for my soi . Each area is given from time to time a sum of money to purchase plants, trees etc. This is allocated to each household for improvements to the stretch outside their property.This works very well because there is on the spot local control ,where from City Hall it would be difficult to monitor .It is all done on a co-operation basis with everyone joining in, after all , no one wants a bollocking from a farang :-" Being close to a school we do get passing kids dropping rubbish who have to be shown the bins and one problem was the ice cream salemen, but even he now tells the kids to put the wrappers in a bag he keeps on his bike .

[FrazeeDK]

this is a social responsiblity issue. It appears to me, that overall, most Thais are not socially conscious. As TrueBrit points out, when anti-littering is pushed by the community, most people will participate after a few nudges. When driving around the province, you can see some villages that are spotless with neatly trimmed hedges, no trash and just very pleasing to the eye.. Others, look like there must be forests of platic bag trees that have lost their bags.. My nephew's village is one such trashy place.. When I talked to him about it, he just doesn't see it as anything to worry about.. "It's not THAT bad" he says.. His children are equally oblivious... Either side of the issue appears to revolve around leadership and setting good examples for people to follow..

[parrot]

I remember growing up and tossing trash out the car window on Sunday rides (yeah, when gas was $0.19 a gallon). Then the "Don't be a Litterbug" campaign put some social pressure on people to clean up their act.....and then anti-littering fines put financial penalties on those who continued to litter. It took years of social pressure, educating, and fines to put a dent in peoples' habits......and even today, a fair share of people still throw their trash on the roadside in the US.
I have seen some evidence of Thai schools in Udon holding those vendors outside their gates responsible for cleaning up......the school just outside the airport used to be a dump each day after school.....but that problem seems to have been corrected.
I still cringe, though, when I'm behind a songtaew, and a young kid, with mom in tow, tosses his/her soda bag off the back end of the truck.