Featured Image Credit: Maria Schriber/Getty
There’s nothing worse than the smell and littering of cigarettes to ruin the aesthetic of a beautiful beach. Hopefully, this problem will be a nuisance of the past with 20 popular tourist beaches joining together to ban smoking.
This push comes in lue of an international conference on sea waste in Phuket, Thailand later this month. According to the chief of marine and coastal resources, one of its main concerns will focus on the highly populated beaches constantly littered with discarded cigarette butts. Among the best-known beaches include Mae Phim in Rayong, Laem Sing in Chanthaburi, Bang Saen in Chon Buri, and much more.
Nine square meters of Patong Beach on Phuket was examined by the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources’ Phuket Marine Biological Centre this past September. The findings were alarming, with an average of 0.76 cigarette butts per square meter. To get a better understanding of the colossal amount of waste discovered, that’s about 101,058 butts along the 1.6-mile beach. The cigarette butts alone made up one-third of all the trash collected.
Thailand has seen major issues with a number of cigarette butts littering its streets. Department director-general Jatuporn Buruspat stated that more than 100 million cigarette butts were left on the roads in the major cities each day, adding to the problem of flooding caused by waste clogging the drains. Buruspat explained how the beaches will be eliminating smoking on the beaches saying, “Smokers will be required to drop their cigarette butts in provided containers before they enter these beaches…No more lighting up while strolling along the beach because that is most likely to end up with a huge number of cigarette butts being dropped on the beaches.” These restrictions will be strictly enforced with a maximum penalty of a year in prison and/or a fine of 100,000 baht (about 0.030 US dollars).
Buruspat is also focusing his efforts on decreasing the number of cigarette butts being dropped into the sea via boats. Thailand has been judged to have the sixth most waste-strewn sea in the world. The country will host an international meeting on sea waste in Phuket on October 22-23. A combination of Asian countries will discuss the problems of waste being dumped into the sea in each country, and how they are dealing with it.