Monsoon leaves Patong Beach littered with trash and plastic waste

Patong Beach has become heavily littered with trash and plastic waste as the southwestern monsoon continues to batter Phuket’s west coast. A large section of the beach was found covered in debris on Sunday afternoon, September 22, highlighting an ongoing environmental issue.

A local expatriate, having lived in Phuket for approximately five years, described the situation along the northern part of Patong Beach with The Phuket News:

“It had finally stopped raining and I went over the hill to enjoy the sunset, and this is what greeted me.”

The expat lamented the frequency of such occurrences.

“This is typical after a big storm. A lot of trash is washed ashore.”

The foreign resident noted that the amount of trash on the shore was reminiscent of the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, “when there was no one to clean the beaches.”

“We see this in the news all the time but you never truly appreciate it until you see it like this yourself.”

Patong Municipality, known for its prompt beach cleanup efforts following significant incidents, has not yet provided details on the volume of trash washed ashore or any planned cleanup activities.

The expat observed that much of the waste consisted of discarded food containers. He suggested that while some of the trash likely comes from fishing boats and other vessels navigating the Malacca Strait, land-sourced waste also contributes significantly to the pollution, reported Phuket News.

“People need to be more aware of what they do with their waste. They may not be near a rubbish bin but they can hold on to it until they are, or just take it home with them.

“You can see that any plastic not cleaned up from the beach, such as the blue drinking water bottle caps, breaks down over time. All this, of course, ends up in marine life and continues to discolour the sand on the beach.”