On Maikhao Beach, there is a storm drain leading from the swamp forest to the beach. Every year, the monsoon waves wash up all kinds of marine debris and deposit them in this underlying area near the beach. We have cleaned this area on a few occasions.
19 August 2021
The first time was after a series of monsoon storms in August 2021. It was an absolute nightmare! An enormous amount of rubbish washed up in this area and got trapped in the storm drain area. A group of us spontaneously came together to clean it up before high tide to ensure that the rubbish was not taken back out to sea. Thirteen of us collected 207 kg of rubbish in 3 hours.
https://www.facebook.com/102076665030960/posts/336455874926370/
10 September 2021
The second time we cleaned this area, there was still a large amount of rubbish from the monsoon waves, but we also found an area that had become a rubbish dump. Three of us cleaned the beach and collected 94.35 kg of rubbish in 2 hours.
https://www.facebook.com/102076665030960/posts/351417186763572/
Before
After
30 January 2022
The third time was with the staff of Holiday Inn Maikhao, members of Plastic-Free Phuket (founded by the students of UWC Thailand), Little Ocean Heroes and Soi Dog Foundation. We thoroughly cleaned the storm drain area and 200 meters of the beach. 47 of us collected 145.5 kg of rubbish.
https://www.facebook.com/102076665030960/posts/444281450810478/
15 February 2022
For our Community Beach Cleanup in Feb, we decided to return to this area to clean up the remaining rubbish that was dumped in the grasslands. We cleaned a bit of the beach area too. Phuket Environmental Foundation, the Maikhao Environment Group and Plastic-Free Phuket joined us for this dirty mission. 22 of us collected 106.5 kg of rubbish. Sadly the majority of this was single-use plastics.
https://www.facebook.com/102076665030960/posts/455003713071585