A local expat, who has been living in Phuket for about five years, told The Phuket News that the area he saw affected was along the northern part of the beach.
“It had finally stopped raining and I went over the hill to enjoy the sunset, and this is what greeted me”, he explained.
“This is typical after a big storm. A lot of trash is washed ashore” the expat lamented.
The expat noted that he had not seen the same amount of trash still strewn along the shore since COVID, “when there was no one to clean the beaches”.
“We see this in the news all the time, but you neer truly appreciate it until you see it like this yourself,” the expat said.
Patong Municipality, which has an excellent record of mobilising workers to clean the beach after major incidents, has yet to report the volume of trash washed ashore, or any cleanup efforts.
The expat noted that much of the waste was discarded food containers. It was his understanding that while waste often washes ashore from fishing boats and other vessels passing Phuket’s west coast ‒ namely the huge volume of marine traffic making its way through the Malacca Strait ‒ land sourced waste finding its way into the waters off Phuket was also very likely.
“People need to be more aware of what they do with their waste. They may not be near a rubbish bin, but they can hold on to it until they are, or just take it home with them,” the expat urged.
“You can see that any plastic not cleaned up from the beach, such as the blue drinking water bottle caps, breaks down over time. All this of course ends up in marine life, and continues to discolour the sand on the beach,” he added.