Beach Clean up 28th April 2012

As the low season is upon us now in Koh Lanta, we have all been looking for something to do. The great thing about it here is that so many people are willing to give up their time and help do a beach clean up. We have been extending our green policy to doing regular clean ups here.

The problem with this clean up however was finding somewhere to do it. The beach underneath our pier was dirty enough, but unfortunately, the tide was high at the time we had arranged to do the clean. Messages were sent out around the island to find the dirtiest beach on the island! The good news was that most of the feedback was positive and there was not a massive amount of rubbish around.

We established that the best beach would be Klong Nin, where we carried out a beach clean up on the 29th August last year.

Messages were sent out via Facebook, texting and word of mouth, and a motley crew turned up ready and willing to collect as much rubbish as possible. Compared to last year, the beach was in quite good condition. We found that we were able to clean a far larger area of the beach as there was not a massive amount of trash. We still managed to collect a huge amount of glass, plastic and other rubbish.

The really great part of the day was that we were able to recruit holiday makers who were relaxing on the beach. They were eager to get involved and happy that they were able to do something positive for the environment while on holiday.

Perhaps the strangest item found was this sun visor, that Gary really took a shine to.

After working really hard we all had a well deserved beer and a chat about our future plans to keep Lanta clean. All in all, it was a really successful day. We collected 245 Kilos of rubbish and took it either for recycling or to the tip on the island. The main thing is that we were able to remove this rubbish from the ocean and prevent it from recirculation.

We have been working with Ocean Divers here on the island to co-ordinate and arrange beach clean ups. We plan on holding a clean up once a fortnight through the low season.