As thousands of tourists flock to tiny Koh Lan, they leave behind tonnes of rotting rubbish that locals are ill-equipped to handle

Blight on the landscape: The rubbish problem on Koh Lan has been building for years, but began to attract attention in 2013 when people started sharing online pictures of a 'garbage mountain'.

For the casual day-tripper to Koh Lan, the island off bustling Pattaya is a picture postcard destination of rolling hills, pristine waters and white sand beaches.

Getting off at the main pier of Ta Naban after a 45-minute ferry ride, Koh Lan appears well-managed and clean. There is no rubbish on the streets and residents and visitors seem to have neatly disposed of their rubbish in bins provided by Pattaya City.

“It is a lot cleaner than the mainland of Pattaya,” said foreign tourist Felix, who visited the island with his family on the recommendation of hotel staff.

“I don’t see how trash would be a big problem here.”

But there is a difference between being a day-tripper and a resident of Koh Lan.

“Rubbish is our biggest problem,” said Sorasak Tonghongthie, a Koh Lan community leader. “You can’t really see it from looking at the touristy areas like this. But if you want to see the real problem, try going over the mountain where not many tourists go and see it for yourself.”

LEFT BEHIND

Located only 7.5km from the mainland, Koh Lan is one of the most popular day-trip destinations for both Thai and foreign visitors to Pattaya.

The 5.6-square-kilometre island is occupied by 3,000 residents who live in about 1,000 households, mostly clustered around the pier. As recently as a few years ago, the island was little more than a humble fishing village, where locals supplemented their income by growing various tropical fruits.

But in recent years the island has undergone a dramatic transformation, and locals are now vastly outnumbered by the hordes of tourists who make the journey from Pattaya each day.

With about 5,000 visitors a day, according to Pattaya City, Koh Lan is generating at least two million baht in daily income, mainly from Chinese, Russian, Indian and Thai tourists.

But as well as spending money, the tourists place a massive strain on the island’s limited infrastructure.

“Each tourist who comes to Koh Lan has at least one or two bags of snacks and they leave the island empty-handed,” one local said.

“They come here for a good time and dump their unwanted items for us to clean up. Can you imagine how much rubbish we have to deal with every day?”

Mr Sorasak, the community leader, gets daily updates on the amount of rubbish visitors and locals generate per day. He said it averages around 30 tonnes — significantly more than authorities are equipped to handle.

“The main problem is that we have 30 tonnes of rubbish every day, but Pattaya City is only able to remove 20 tonnes of that from the island,” Mr Sorasak said. “What can we do with the rest?”

FOLLOW YOUR NOSE

While the rubbish problem on Koh Lan has been building for years, it only began to attract attention in 2013 when people started sharing pictures online of what was labelled a “garbage mountain” in the island’s centre.

After receiving directions from locals, Spectrum rented a motor scooter and went in search of the dump.

“If you want to see the real problem, follow this small road and go over the hill,” one local said. “Once you get close, the putrid odour will guide your nose to its location.”

The directions proved easy to follow; Koh Lan is only 4km long and 2km at its widest point. The terrain is mostly mountainous — 180 metres at its highest point — and covered in dense vegetation.

Setting off from Ta Naban in the island’s east, we made our way over the steep mountain pass on the road to Samae beach. There was little traffic, because the west coast of the island is more difficult to reach by road than the popular beaches of Tawaen and Tonglang.

About 700m from Samae, we came to a fork in the road. While debating which way to turn, as promised, a pungent stench hit our nostrils, telling us to head left.

As we descended down into a valley, the clear blue sky came into view and melded with the ocean. It provided a stunning backdrop for the ugly spectacle that lay beside the road: The green hills had been replaced by mounds of rotting garbage — although in truth it was less of a “mountain” and more of a garbage “lake”.

According to Pattaya City’s office on Koh Lan, the dump site was earmarked by the Royal Forest Department as the site for a water reservoir for the island. But the project was cancelled several years ago when an alternative site was found, and all that remains of it today is a lone pillar jutting forlornly above the millions of plastic bags and other refuse.

A total of 12 rai of land has been set aside for the dump site; already the islanders have managed to fill half of it with all kinds of rubbish, without any separation process, from fruit skins to seafood shells, beer bottles, teddy bears, ironing boards and bicycles.

As Spectrum arrived at the site, workers from a resort on another side of the island were busy unloading refuse from a small truck.

“We are told that we can dump our trash here,” one of the staff members said. “It belongs to the community. We are doing nothing wrong.”

One man’s trash: Not everyone hates the dump. Ms Pa earns a living from scouring the rubbish for recyclables such as glass and plastic bottles.

SEEKING REFUSE

For many, the existence of the dump site is considered a burden; an ugly blight on the island that drags down its lucrative tourism image. But for a select few, it provides a livelihood.

In the middle of the hot sunny day, Boonsom walked through the hordes of flies, rats and cockroaches towards the middle of the trash heap. His wife, Pa, remained around the edges, scouring for recyclables like glass and plastic bottles.

“This here is our heaven,” said Mr Boonsom. “We have no competitors like we would if we were collecting trash in Pattaya. We spend most of the day out here, and then sell what we are able to find.”

The couple, both in their fifties, have been collecting rubbish on Koh Lan for the past five years. With rates at six baht per kilogramme for plastic bottles and 50 satang per kilogramme of glass, they say they can easily make enough money to live on. Even though those rates are only half of what is offered on the mainland, here, with no competitors, the returns are far greater.

“Up until two years ago we didn’t earn as much as we do these days, but then the amount of rubbish [being dumped here] seemed to increase dramatically,” Mr Boonsom explained.

Tourist trap: With about 5,000 visitors a day, according to Pattaya City, Koh Lan is generating at least two million baht in daily income, mainly from Chinese, Russian, Indian and Thai tourists.

PILING HIGH

Jaran Teammung is the chief of Pattaya City’s security division and acting chief of Koh Lan’s environmental office. When he was first posted to the island in late 2004, he had only a handful of staff to work with. The municipality had implemented plans to remove up to 10 tonnes of garbage from the island per day, which at the time seemed more than adequate.

For a while, the system worked well. Pattaya City staff managed to move across all beaches and the town centre twice a day, collecting rubbish — usually about five tonnes a day — to send back to the mainland.

But in 2008, the number of visitors to the island began to rise rapidly, and the waste management operation failed to keep pace.

“Tawaen beach has become the worst area for rubbish because of the tour groups,” Mr Jaran explained.

The increase happened quickly, and by 2009 workers were routinely exceeding their 10-tonne waste removal limit. “Pattaya City only planned for 10 tonnes of rubbish per day since that is how much the ferry can handle in one trip,” Mr Jaran explained.

But soon workers were collecting 20 and later 30 tonnes of rubbish, with nowhere to put the excess.

Compounding the problem, community leader Mr Sorasak said the garbage collection ferry sent by Pattaya City broke down in late 2012 and was out of service for an entire year, while the pickup truck that travels around the island to collect trash was also out of action.

“We had an unbelievably huge amount of rubbish that was piling up in every corner of the community,” he recalled.

In January 2013, locals and resort owners could no longer cope. They began to take the trash and dump it anywhere they could: along roads, on hills, in the forest.

Pattaya City devised a short-term solution: it allowed residents to leave their garbage in the valley where the dump now sits. More than two years later, what began as a small mound of rubbish has slowly accumulated into a sprawling pile of rotting waste.

“If we don’t allow the villagers to dump rubbish here, they will just dump it somewhere else such as in the sea or on the street,” Mr Jaran said.

FLIES ON THE WALL

To the thousands of day-trippers on the island at any one time, the trash problem is not directly visible. But even the beaches are starting to show symptoms of the island’s ill health.

Pen is the manager of Kra Pong restaurant on Samae beach, which lies on the southwest side of the island, just 700 metres from the rubbish dump.

Ms Pen, 25, said Pattaya City workers collect trash once a day, which helps keep the beach area clean. But there is a bigger problem that no one is able to solve.

“On days when there is no breeze, thousands of flies will converge on the restaurants along the beach,” Ms Pen explained. “They fly into the kitchen, and land on the guests’ tables and on their food. Many people have stopped coming to our restaurants because of them.”

Meanwhile, on the northern part of the island, Kit, a food stall owner, said rubbish in his area was mostly leftover food and unwanted parts of sea creatures such as prawn and crab shells.

“This type of rubbish rots quickly and sometimes the rubbish truck can’t collect it,” Mr Kit said. “Many people solve the problem by simply throwing the rubbish back into the sea.”

Some locals said that households built illegally on the shoreline release waste water directly into the sea without any filtration or treatment. While the pollution can’t be seen, residents say it creates an unpleasant smell.

“It is not noticeable on normal days when the tide is at its usual level,” Mr Kit explained. “But you should come to see it during low tide — you won’t believe what you see. I wouldn’t get in the water in that area no matter what.”

Overwhelmed: Koh Lan has to cope with 30 tonnes of rubbish each day. Two-thirds of that is shipped back to the mainland. The rest stays on the island.

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

In May last year, Pattaya City finally ordered a brand new ferry that is able to handle 20 tonnes of rubbish at a time. For the first time in more than a year, refuse could be removed from Koh Lan.

The municipality workers on the island continue to collect trash from the beaches, though it far exceeds the carrying capacity of even the new ferry. The waste is packed into 20 large containers which can handle one tonne each, before being driven down to Naban pier where the ferry arrives at 6pm every day to collect it.

Once the ferry gets back to the mainland, cranes are used to unload the boxes before they are returned to Koh Lan.

Pattaya City also has no landfill of its own, and must transport all of its waste to a site in neighbouring Saraburi.

The remaining 10 tonnes of rubbish left on Koh Lan is simply left at the dump site, where Mr Boonsom and Mrs Pa continue to sort their way through the ever-growing piles of waste.

Mr Jaran said most of the rubbish being dumped at the site are plastics and other non-biodegradables.

By next year, Mr Jaran hopes that a proposed garbage recycling and separation plant will be completed, and the island’s rubbish problem will finally have a permanent solution.

“After the plant is completed, our next step will be to build our own incinerator,” Mr Jaran said.

“Once all the systems are in place, we will be able to solve the problem permanently and sustainably.” n