Plastic Free Phuket

Plastic Free Phuket is student-led initiative that collaborates with businesses and the Phuket Governor to shift the island towards a more sustainable future, reducing single-use plastic reliance. Students, staff and community members conduct weekly beach cleanups and work with local groups to sort, recycle, and reuse what we collect from the beach.

The group has a multi-pronged approach to tackling sustainability issues in Phuket:

1. Advocacy:

• Using an Instagram page to spread awareness, document progress, and promote cleanup participation.
• Facilitating stall stories at school – posters, etc. to raise awareness and encourage participation.

2. Action:

• Collaborating with Living Waters for funding for beach cleaning tech, transportation to and from beach clean sites and possible island cleans, funding for community action in Phuket
• Collaboration with Sustainable Maikhao
• Organizing beach cleans and sort rubbish from cleans
• Making beach cleans fun: music, families, snacks (no plastic)
• Design and implementation of strategic approach to beach cleans; different places, etc.
• Contributing to data collection on rubbish
• Putting standards in place for beach cleans so that when grades do it there’s a process they follow

3. Community action:

• Encouraging local businesses  to switch from plastic to paper or to nothing, or to pay extra for plastic bags, etc.
• Recycle and trash bins in the community
• Community education- Problem in Thai schools that children aren’t learning about sustainability 
• Tourist education; sustainable tourism
• Buoy idea – repurposing styrofoam 
• Recycling plastic – blue tree
• Align with world days

4. School action:

• Reusable straws and cups, particularly for boarding students 
• Minimising school use of plastic containers
• Promotion of Paperless/waste-free school
• Composting