The worlds biggest trashcan

[dutchboy]

Can somebody please explain to me why Thai people think the road and public/office buildings are their trashcan.

Earlier this week I was on my way to work. From a taxi approaching from the other side, the driver simply threw his food wrapper out of his window on the street.

The Soi I live in is literally littered with trash. After the first real rain about 2 weeks ago, the trash started floating and accumulating on parts of the road that were slightly higher. My wife went out, and swept the trash in front of our house in a dustpan, and subsequently into our trashcan.
After the rain our neighbour, who also had a lot of trash on her porch, found sweeping it away from her porch onto ours a good enough excercise. When my wife got angry with her (my wife is not Thai), she had no idea why anybody would get angry about that.

In the office building I work, I have to watch my step going down the stairs, or I could break my neck over food styrofoams, emty coffeecups, chocolate bar wrappers etc that are ///// on the stairs.
In the parking lot are the smoking areas, with ashtrays. The ground around the ashtray is littered with cigarettes, waiting for the maid to sweep them.
In the toilet inside the office, there are unflushed toilets, used handtowels right next to the trashcan intended for them.

etc. etc. etc.

Why are Thai people so careless about their environment? Is this a lack of education/social development or is it something else?

[len]

by dutchboy on Tue 22 Mar 2011 9:32 am

Can somebody please explain to me why Thai people think the road and public/office buildings are their trashcan.

Earlier this week I was on my way to work. From a taxi approaching from the other side, the driver simply threw his food wrapper out of his window on the street.

The Soi I live in is literally littered with trash. After the first real rain about 2 weeks ago, the trash started floating and accumulating on parts of the road that were slightly higher. My wife went out, and swept the trash in front of our house in a dustpan, and subsequently into our trashcan.
After the rain our neighbour, who also had a lot of trash on her porch, found sweeping it away from her porch onto ours a good enough excercise. When my wife got angry with her (my wife is not Thai), she had no idea why anybody would get angry about that.

In the office building I work, I have to watch my step going down the stairs, or I could break my neck over food styrofoams, emty coffeecups, chocolate bar wrappers etc that are ///// on the stairs.
In the parking lot are the smoking areas, with ashtrays. The ground around the ashtray is littered with cigarettes, waiting for the maid to sweep them.
In the toilet inside the office, there are unflushed toilets, used handtowels right next to the trashcan intended for them.

etc. etc. etc.

Why are Thai people so careless about their environment? Is this a lack of education/social development or is it something else?

Mate, they’re just different! You'll become an old person trying to figure it out!

In 18 years here I’ve never been to an office building with unflushed toilets! I could say that all office buildings have janitor service staff from the smallest to the largest complex’s . Might I ask where you work?

[dutchboy]

Len, I am not talking about the general toilets. I am talking about the toilets inside the office, the ones my dear colleagues are using.

Office is on Rama 4, right next to Tesco.

[Silaworld]

Dutchboy,
Of course you are right! When I was in Thailand for the first time I couldn' t believe my eyes when I saw all the trash around me nor the careless behaviour of most of Thai people. There are differences though and it will often depend on the concentration of Westerners. For example Bangsaen Beach compared to Pattaya is disgustingly worse.
I think it's a stage in the development of civilisation. Mexico for instance is just as bad and is's a developing country just as Thailand.

[drake]

Bro, you must not have been to China....

Was in Yunan right before xmas.
Half of the toilets were left over from the 30s, I swear,
the crusted urea stain and crumbling walls would attest to that.
Stalls with no door.
A common troft on the floor through the middle of all of the stalls is where you squat down and do your business....sideway while staring at the person in the next stall.
Occasionally they will turn the water on to 'flush'.

The toilet in the nice city hotels are gleaming stainless and glass, squeaky clean.
You look out the window of your nice hotel room.
There in the back lot a guy is on the garage wall.
Trash everywhere....

Once I had a house in The Burb, USA
My dear neighbours felt perfectly OKay to walk their dogs down the street and let them run in to my yard to do their business as they watch, then leave the steaming piles of for me to clean up.
Several times a week.

[banmebkk]

I think downtown bangkok has improve quite a bit, to be honest I hardly see piles of trash on the sidewalks thanks to the city sweepers. But you do see piles of trash late at night, this is typical in any city when people pile trash up for the garbage truck to come by.

As for the smaller soi yes there are piles of trash as city sweepers don't clean the soi on a daily basis. Thais need better education at throwing trash in trash cans and recycling, the schools needs to reinforce that in kids heads. These basic practices are not reinforce again and again in Thai schools at an early age. The older adults simply does not give a damn about the environment as they are never taught about it. May of these trash throwers also live among a trash pile themselves.

I have been through many small communities where people just pile trash up across the street. It just amazes me they do not think how dirty and unsanitary it is, also unpleasant to the eye and community. It is not like they don't have city cleaners who come by to pick up trash in their community. So that is something that I do not understand as well.

Another point is many don't have a generally sense of being in a community and helping each other out, they just push their problems aside thinking people will take care of it for them. Hence the "Mai Ben Rai" attitude.

[bangbang]

This is true for most asian countries. Singapore might be the cleanest of them all. I live in the Philippines and I can relate to what you're saying. But I also think that you may be a bit unlucky at your office building as some are sparkling clean, and some are littered all over the place.

[phaethon]

I moved to an apartment overlooking an area of undeveloped land in West Bangkok. About 10 months ago a concrete road was built alongside the land and now about 70% of the green edge of this new soi is covered with fly-tipped rubbish - houeshold rubbish, builders' waste, tyres, even sewer dredgings dumped by BMA contractors.



Now I have to move before the summer comes and things really begin to stink.

[paulc]

If every household paid 10,000 Baht (as in most Western countries) per year for a sanitation Dept. you probably would not see that much trash. Money would solve a lot of social problems.

[Eric]

As Singapore was mentioned and having lived there for a long time, I can attested that old Singapore too has the same rubbish problems like in Thailand. However with education and stiff fine and forceful implementation of the law, Singapore is a much cleaner place now. As a "fine" city, you can be penalized for throwing a cig butt or ash, anything out of the car, littering, throwing your rubbish at undesignated locations and if caught throwing from your HDB window, you can be evicted too besides the heavy fine. Singapore may perhaps have the most rubbish bins per capital in the world, something that I find scarce in Thailand.