Nobody likes tourist spots filled with trash, yet we keep littering the most beautiful places. Thailand has found a perfect solution to this problem, mail the trash back to the tourist.
The natural resources and environment minister of Thailand, Varawut Silpa-archa proposed this idea on his Facebook page. He posted an image of a box with a mishmash of various plastic and food waste, with this caption: “You forgot something at Khao Yai National Park.”
The box looks like a mail-parcel ready to be sent. He suggested that this box will be delivered to the original litterers with note.
Expanding on the topic, he said the government even had plans to blacklist serious offenders from ever visiting the country again. This could include damage to national parks, causing excessive noise or disruption at the tourist spots etc. The move was inspired by two recent examples of bad tourists, as he said in the post. First was a group in Khao Yai who’d left garbage in their rented tent. Second, a few allegedly drunk tourists at Namtok Samlan National Park camps.
According to Varawut, leaving trash behind, making noise after 10 pm or being drunk in public spaces are all prohibited activities. Breaking these rules make result in the tourists being evicted immediately.
Even though littering can be fined up to 500,000 baht (about Rs 11 lakh) and or be held in jail for up to five years per Thailand’s National Park Act, the tourists don’t feel threatened by these rules and continue to litter the famous tourist locations.
The tourism board of Thailand was very pleased with these new ideas of mailing back the trash and blacklisting offenders. The director of tourism authority, Charinya Kiatlapnachai, applauded the minister’s commitment towards maintaining the country’s natural resources as well as the beauty and well-being of Thailand.
“Thailand’s national parks and wildlife have had time to recover from damaging results of tourism such as littering over the past six months and this gesture has the best of intentions to ensure we all do our part to help our country remain clean, safe and beautiful,” he told Washington Post, according to a report.