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