When the Thai Hotel Association on Samui puts back into the community, it does so with total commitment.

Samui has hundreds of hotels and luxury resorts lining the beaches around the island. And they exist to provide every comfort a holidaymaker could possibly wish for. They’re businesses, and making money by delivering a great product and service is their priority. But behind the scenes there’re determined forces that are focused on strengthening links with the local community, being pro-active in environmental causes and achieving tangible results that benefit future generations of native Samuians.

Back in the early 1960s, the first chapter of the Thai Hotels Association (THA) was set up in Bangkok. Aimed initially at standardizing the quality of the rooms and services provided to early tourists, its membership has grown exponentially ever since. Today, many of the hotels on Samui belong to the THA’s Southern Chapter East Coast and their aims and objectives have changed with the times. Samui in particular has experienced rapid growth and the infrastructure of the island hasn’t always been able to keep pace.

By some distance, the tourism industry is the largest employer on the island and generates the most revenue. There’s little on the island that isn’t in some way reliant on the success of tourism. And it’s only right that the hotels should be supportive and influential in how the island lives and breathes. They have pledged themselves to several inter-connected projects. For instance, all of the member hotels are actively involved in utilizing Effective Microorganism (EM) technology. This involves recycling all hotel kitchen and garden waste into fertilizer and liquid EM can be safely used to clean septic tanks, toilets and floors. It not only results in cost savings, but also takes the pressure off the island’s waste disposal service.

They also work closely with the local authorities to help improve the overall tourist experience, take part with other groups, in beach clean-ups and contribute to many charitable events. There’s quite a number of organisations and associations on Samui that have taken a positive role in promoting and sustaining the island. Known as the ‘Green Island Project’, it has lots of different contributors but they all have the same final objective – a clean, healthy and sustainable island.

A good example of how they work together happened in March this year. A beach clean-up of the tiny neighbouring island of Koh Tan, off Samui’s southern coast, was organized. Past storms had taken their toll and the THA along with volunteers from the hotels, local schools, the Koh Tan Conservation Group, the local authorities, island residents and some visiting tourists made their way over to the island. All the flotsam and jetsam was collected and brought back for proper disposal and an EM ball was added to the island’s canal to help improve its quality.

Driving the THA’s ‘Green Committee’ is John Ens, the General Manager of Poppies Resort, in Chaweng. He’s been on the island for many years and has witnessed the challenges that Samui has gone through. “As the island became more and more popular it was inevitable that new hotels would be constructed and that also meant an increased amount of accommodation for all the people who have come to the island to work. And infrastructures that are easily put in place on the mainland aren’t as straightforward on an island.”

Over the years, a number of ways of disposing of refuse has been tried, such as landfills and incinerators. However, it soon became clear that new methods of reduction, recycling and conservation needed to be introduced. And to ensure sustainability, the members of the THA took it upon themselves to initiate a ‘Low Carbon School Program’. Over two years, they implemented the initiative in all of the 26 government-funded schools on the island which educate around 18,000 Thai children. Many of their parents work in the tourism industry, and in the hotels in particular. And with the support of the local authorities, subjects such as recycling, reducing, reusing, energy saving, water saving, water treatment and environmental awareness have been included into the schools’ curriculums. Each student is marked on the projects they undertake related to green issues and are actively encouraged to begin those projects in their homes and help educate their siblings and other family members.

It’s something of a first in Thailand and has attracted widespread interest from authorities across the Kingdom. Samui’s local government department responsible for schools now grants an additional 50,000 baht to each school for the projects. And each school has two sponsoring hotels that provide manpower, advice and tangible support.

Following on from this, in 2009, a ‘Green Fingers Club’ that comprised gardeners and landscapers from the hotels was established. They were already involved in projects specific to their locations and are instrumental in the EM and recycling processes. Supported by the Samui Mayor’s office and the THA, the club was given some land by the government to set up a nursery for growing indigenous trees on Samui. It’s also a centre for learning and development and the members are also closely involved with the school projects.

Several hotels on the island, such as Prana Beach Resorts & Spa in Bangrak, have their own hydroponic gardens and they teach the children how to make and maintain their own gardens in the schools which can provide vegetables and herbs for school lunches. Other resorts, such as Fair House Villas in Maenam, have extensive gardens and vegetable plots. And they give talks and tours to school groups about their green initiatives and how they can all take part both at home and at school.

Samui’s Thai Hotel Association members have admirably demonstrated their desire and commitment to a better future environment for visitors and for those who call the island home. Take a peek behind the scenes and ask what the hotel you’re staying at is doing. Are they proud to tell you about their endeavours and show you that they care about more than just profit? If so, then there’s a very good chance that they’ll really care about you.

Source: Johnny Peterson
               Samui Holiday Magazine

Samui Regatta Organizers, in coorporate with the International School of Samui, led crew members of boats participating in the regatta, students, officials and staff of business and civic organizations who took part in the Bangrak Beach Clean Up recently.

The event, held on a non-racing day if the regatta, was to give something back to the island. The volunteers gathered at Laem Mai Kaen at Bangrak Beach near the Yacht Club and started the clean up moving along the public beach armed with gloves, trash bags and some tools.

Many of last year's contributors were again in the list of 2011 contributors - SeaTran Discovery Pier, Bangrak Dee Club, AIS, Makro, Foremost, Wongpanit, Thai International Hospital, Petcherat Marina Pier, Bangkok Airways, Bangrak School, Mermaid Resot, Ifun Films and Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui.

On Sunday, 6 March 2011, Koh Samui's Local authority and Koh Tan's Conservation Group organized a beach clean up of Koh Tan. Staff from THA-green hotels, schools, villages and even foreigners numbering 150 left Tong Krut in the morning by long-tail boat.

            

Garbage, which consisted of mainly foam and shoes was removed from the beaches and canals. The amount of glass and plastic bottles was less than expected. The rubbish was then bagged and returned to Koh Samui for separation and disposal.

   

An EM ball (effective micro-organism ball) and EM solution was added to the canal water to help improve its quality.

The visit ended with an inspection of the mangrove, which was in good condition. Several yesrs ago, for the benefit of those who are interested in nature, TAT and Koh Tan's Conservation Group erected wooden walkways through the forest, highlighted the different types of mangrove trees and built bird observation areas.

         

 

SAMUI TAKES THE LEED WITH A PIONEERING CONSERVATION PROJECT THAT'S UNIQUE IN THAILAND 

At times there can be more than a quarter of a million people on our little island. And that’s a lot. Apart from the ebb and flow of visitors, more and more businesses have sprung up. More accommodation has appeared, along with more eateries to cater for the increased population. And then there’s the associated service-industry of suppliers, wholesalers, engineers, repair shops and workers, all of which are growing proportionately. These things are certainly generating more income for Samui. But they’re generating a correspondingly larger amount of refuse, too. A generation ago this wasn’t a problem as nearly all of Samui’s refuse was adapted and used again in some way, or was organic and simply went away all by itself. There were no plastic bags from supermarkets, no stretchy plastic tags from 6-packs of beer, rope was made of hemp, not nylon, and there was no polystyrene – banana leaves (or paper) were used to wrap takeaway food. But things have changed dramatically since those days. And, three or four years back, it had become distressingly apparent that something needed to be done. It was no longer sustainable to sling our garbage over the nearest wall and forget about it.

The Thai Hotels Association (THA) has been around since 1963, formed initially in Bangkok when visitors to Thailand started to increase in number. Its initial intentions were to standardise the quality of accommodation offered and generally enhance the tourism experience. But since that time it has spread and diversified and there’s now an active branch on Samui, the THA Southern Chapter East Coast, to be precise. And, today, they’re doing a lot more than just making sure that hotel rooms are being properly cleaned every day!

Working hand-in-hand with local government officials, they’re tackling our refuse problem at a grass-roots level. An offshoot of the Samui THA, the ‘Green Committee’, was established by John Morris Williams, who was its driving force until he left in 2009. And he was succeeded as Chairman by John Ens, the General Manager of ‘Poppies Samui’ resort. “We tried different ways to dispose of the refuse,” John told me, “but it quickly became clear that the only effective way to do this was to reduce it, not try to find ways to get rid of it. It’s the ‘three Rs’ of conservation: Reduce, Re-use and Recycle. And the way to do this is through education.” The ‘Low Carbon School Program’ was established in 2008 but initially caused scepticism – the whole idea depended upon having the money to establish it in the first place and then enough motivated people to make it work … and to keep it going! And so, as a ‘taster’ project, two of the THA’s member-resorts combined to sponsor a local school. The two resorts pooled their resources, created programs of study for the students, organised trips to see working examples of conservation and recycling, set up the first Green Project in the school and established all of this as an aspect of the school’s curriculum.

It was hugely successful and more schools were included, similarly paired with nearby resorts. Samui’s ‘Tessaban’ (local government authority) was impressed and the Deputy Mayor, Khun Surapong Viriyanon, became an enthusiastic crusader for the project. The ‘Green Fingers Club’, an association of all the gardeners from the island’s resorts, and spearheaded by Khun ultamart Tongphauk, was similarly keen to become involved. With everyone working to support the project, this ‘green’ program of school events and activities was refined and expanded. Student projects were extended to also include their local communities, and schools’ curricula modified to incorporate all this as a permanent element in the education of Samui’s young people. And, today, it’s now all of Samui’s young people in every school on the island – all 18,000 of them! This is the astonishing result of two years’ constant work and co-operation between local businesses and local government.

In September 2010, in a week-long round-the-island pageant, the last few schools were ceremoniously added to make it a total of every single one of Samui’s 26 government-managed schools. This is the first-ever Regional Green School Curriculum Project. Nothing like it exists anywhere else in Thailand; such knowledge is not normally a part of the education of young Thai people. But it has now become so all over Samui. “These children are the future of our island,” Khun Surapong explained, “and the lessons they are now learning to put into practice will help to ensure our successful future. Not so long ago we were incinerating 150 tons of refuse at a time. Now much of this is already being recycled.”

A visit to any of the local schools will immediately bear witness to the project’s effectiveness. You’ll see neatly-labelled bins for different types of waste, and heaps of organic matter in various stages of composting. There’ll be small groups of students tending the part of the vegetable garden for which they’re responsible, or planting young trees, and with mounds of EM (‘Effective Microorganisms’) dotted about to use as a natural fertiliser. And, if you look carefully, you’ll also see evidence of the sponsoring resorts’ engineers having installed water reclamation devices and grease traps. But what you can’t see is what’s going on in the classrooms.

Each student has a ‘Green Book’ in which points accumulate. They are rewarded for each of their projects, and there’s also a point scored for every kilo of refuse they bring from home. Their whole family is involved and is now becoming aware of these issues. And the students are discovering dozens of ways to re-use some of this ‘garbage’ as well as recycling it. Classroom walls are covered with displays of picture frames made from ice-lolly sticks or painted scraps of plastic and you’ll see attractive ornaments and flowers that turn out to have been made from waste plastic or paper. You’ll even see kids wearing hats they’ve made from old juice cartons.

Already the success of this project has aroused nationwide interest and there have been approaches from government officials in towns and cities on the mainland. But not all of them have access to the support-structure that’s developed on Samui – our Tessaban is now granting 50,000 baht to each school, with the sponsoring resorts supplying the advice, manpower and curriculum template. Sadly not everywhere is this fortunate.

Those visitors who return here every year or so for their holidays are immediately impressed. The results are clear for all to see, with cleaner roadsides and refuse-collection crews now operating twice a day. But what isn’t on view is all the combined hard work, determination and co-operation behind the scenes. Nobody knows what the future holds. But whatever it may be, the future now certainly seems a lot brighter for Samui – and cleaner and healthier, too!

By Rob De Wet

www.greenfins-thailand.org

Overview : Monitoring of the socio-economic impacts/benefits of coral reefs has been noted as a common and urgent need in the SE Asian region. As a contribution to, and in support of, relevant work undertaken in the region, the US counterpart contributions will be used to initiate a new activity called "Green Fins" by which a network of dive operators will be asked to offer tours according to a set of environmentally- friendly guidelines.

The dive operators will assist in surveying and keeping track of information on their customers with regard to their knowledge of and behaviour in the sea. In addition, the dive operators may help with monitoring coral reefs when they take customers on dive trips.

The "Green Fins" initiative will strengthen the involvement and role of dive operators as an important stakeholder and partner in the protection, conservation and sustainable use of coral reefs, and will raise the environmental awareness for coral reefs. In support of the "Green Fins" initiative, capacity building activities and training workshops will be organised as needed.