So, we hit the island, I was the guide for 16 worldly groovers and change makers. We’d been out the night before at a beach party on Koh Samui, so we were all slightly hanging, to say the least. After a hard earned week teaching in the school and adventuring around the island, everyone deserved a big one! Anyways, we hit the shores of Koh Tao, buzzing for a new location and to see what we could get up to.
First night there was pretty chilled, a few buckets (no straws… well, we asked, but didn’t always receive #plasticfreetraveldramas) and a gander at the fire-show-boys 😉. The next day came and feeling a little fresher than the day before we hit the shores. Big beach parties bring straws, plastic cups and ciggy butts… all over the beach. Given, some bars and hotels had tried to give the beach some lovin, but a lot of the time, the tide beats the staff.
Myself and some of the Bamboo crew then later some local tourists, hit the shores for the morning and we collected a good four bags of rubbish. A lot of those bloody pellets from bean bags, and boy, were they a mission to collect!! We called it after a few hours, because we were hot and a marine conservation workshop at New Heaven Dive was calling.
However, then on the walk back, a few ciggy butts were noticed, then a few more, then a sh*t load more!!! After 20 minutes we had picked up 368 ciggy butts!!!!!! Oh, and this was only one tiny section of the beach, I can’t imagine what we would have found if we had of had dug up some of the sand. On the positive side, the bars and hotels were happy to dispose of our rubbish – yay!
However, where does it go?? That is a problem in itself and these small, tourist islands, like Koh Tao are turning into rubbish piles.
The more we use. The more we have to get rid of.
There are some great initiatives going on on the island to help reduce waste and to educate the public and tourists about what they can do and why it’s so important to conserve our ocean. Always great to see.
And our crew was very lucky, after all their hard work on the beach clean and getting stuck into the workshop, we went on a snorkelling adventure and everyone got to swim with some TURTLES! Happy days!
