Original Thai Version Published on 27 May 2026
In late September 2025, before the rainy season swept over southern Thailand, we traveled to “Puyu,” a mid-sized island in Satun province located about 15 kilometers from the mainland shore, home to a community of over 1,600 people — including Jan, or Chakrit Tepuyu, a university junior who was born and raised there.
The trip began with his stories about the beauty, calm, and simplicity of the home he’d left — but with one crucial twist: a “waste pile” that was slowly eating away at it. He said the space beneath most people’s houses there was full of trash, while the long-standing burning ground gave off a foul smell and served as the main gateway through which waste made its way into the sea. All of this affects both people’s lives and the ecosystem — yet it seems to have become an accepted, chronic problem.
This article goes beyond examining how real Jan’s concerns are. Over three days on Puyu Island, our team also spoke with a range of people — young, middle-aged, and elderly — to hear their perspectives on the waste problem in their own community, highlighting the importance of “everyone’s participation” in reflecting on what’s needed for fair and inclusive development and problem-solving.
01 – Return to the Home
In May 2025, after final exams, Jan packed bags and brought his 22-year-old self back to his hometown — unlike most of his classmates, who chose to stay in Bangkok to look for work.
“If you want a good job, Bangkok is still the answer. But for me at that time, work wasn’t the main issue. As someone who’d always been active in volunteer work and engaged with the community, what I wanted to do was bring my knowledge back to develop my island. I hope to see my parents, relatives, friends, and the people around me have a better quality of life, and to see the sea I grew up with conserved and protected.”
It’s a straightforward explanation, but one with clear “passion” and “purpose.” Without hesitation, Jan returned to the embrace of Satun, a small town on the Andaman coast once known as “peaceful, clean, and naturally pristine.” The road home for him was filled with memories — the pier, the mangrove forest, the sea breeze. Some things had changed, but many others stayed the same. Even as the boat entered Puyu’s waters, one thing Jan saw had never changed: the “waste” that had been part of the island for as long as he could remember.
“I come home at least once a year. Every time I return, I find the same waste in our seawater. Once on the island, garbage is scattered everywhere. But the thing that bothers me most is the ‘burning ground’ built on mangrove forest land, which smells terrible and is never a pleasant sight — yet it sits right at the entrance to our village. As long as it exists, there’s almost no point thinking about community tourism, because it’s not a place fit for welcoming visitors. That said, you can’t blame the villagers, because this is about the most they can manage — it may be economical, but for the environment and the health of the people on the island, it’s definitely not worth it in the long run.”
Jan explained this while walking us to the “burning ground,” located less than 500 meters from the community. One side of the ground borders a canal that connects to the sea; the other borders the main road villagers use to get around. It’s surrounded by withered, standing mangrove trees, with soot marks bearing witness to countless past burnings. Besides Pak Cik and Bang Mat — the two sub-district administration workers who handle the entire waste process from collection to transport to burning — another creature claims the territory as its own: a troop of monkeys eagerly rummaging through the evening’s haul.
“This scene has become normal to the villagers, even though it never should have existed in the first place, because there are problems hiding behind it.
“First, our marine ecosystem is affected and gradually deteriorating. It’s clear that the mangrove forest, which serves as a nursery for marine life, is dying off, so the nursery area has shrunk. Next is the toxic and hazardous residue affecting both people and the environment, since waste isn’t sorted before burning. Then there’s the smoke from burning and the smell of rotting scraps — especially mantis shrimp shells — which count as air pollution that affects health. And the last problem is that even with burning, a fair amount of waste still escapes the process, either because the fire doesn’t reach everything evenly or because the monkeys pull it out.
“So if you ask where that escaped waste goes — the answer is it either piles up on the ground or floats out to sea, becoming yet another danger to marine animals. As a result, a traditional, long-used management method alone isn’t enough to solve this,” Jan said.
“Coming home this time is different from previous times, because I intend to stay a long time. And if you ask what’s the first thing I want to change, I think it would be waste management,” he said, describing his hopes and intentions in a serious tone, as the fire behind him burned all kinds of waste indiscriminately, just as the orange sun ahead slowly slipped from the sky for another day.
02 – How Puyu People Suffer from the Waste Crisis
Jan’s reflections may not be new — in truth, people on the island have long been aware of this chronic problem. The next day, Jan took our team to talk with people in the community, and a survey of 163 of them — about 10% of Puyu’s total population — helped bring clarity and order to a tangle of complex issues.
The first finding: most survey respondents were fishers (28.2%), followed by wage workers/employees (21.5%) and traders (15.3%), with the rest made up of farmers, civil servants, homemakers, and students. Over 106 people, or 65% of all respondents, agreed that “waste is a very urgent problem,” another 28% saw it as “fairly urgent,” and 6.1% rated its urgency as “moderate.”
Looking at the causes or types of waste that concern people most, over 92.6% ranked “household/community waste” as their top concern, followed by beach litter, waste from fishing boats and marine activities, and cross-border waste from neighboring countries. Waste from tourists ranked lowest in concern, at just 8.6% — which Jan explained is because Puyu’s tourism isn’t yet well developed and receives relatively few visitors compared with other Andaman community islands such as Koh Sarai and Koh Libong.
Regardless of the cause or type, the waste problem affects Puyu in one way or another: over 86.6% of respondents said it harms the environment — causing pollution, water contamination, and microplastic risks to marine life; 59.5% said it affects their health, such as causing illness or disease and raising the risk of infection from carrier animals; 49.1% believed it leads to other social problems, such as conflict between households; and 41.7% felt it hurts the island’s tourism economy, particularly due to the visible smell and unsightliness of the burning ground.
Sunisa Damad, a public health officer at the Puyu Island Sub-District Administrative Organization — the only civil servant directly responsible for supporting waste management — explained that current waste management on Puyu has three parts. At the source: households are supposed to sort waste from the start and put it in bins, but many households don’t have enough bins, and sorting by type is rarely done. In the middle: it’s the local government’s duty to collect and gather waste for disposal, currently handled mainly by Pak Cik and Bang Mat, who ride motorcycles with sidecars around the island every evening to collect waste. Finally, at the end: disposal — as we’ve seen, still done by burning in an open area.
“The three stages have connecting points and specific conditions that create linked problems. The first is geography — since the island is as far as 15 kilometers from shore, transporting waste off the island for disposal on the mainland is very difficult due to high transport costs.
“Next is a knowledge gap — it has to be admitted that from local government officers to the general public, there’s still a large gap in understanding systematic waste management, such as understanding the differences between waste types and their long-term impact on the surrounding marine ecosystem.
“Another is behavioral — because it’s an island, most people buy goods from the mainland in bulk to stock up, generating a lot of plastic packaging. Combined with the lack of a drinking water system on the island, they still rely on bottled drinking water in plastic containers.
“Finally, there’s waste from Malaysia — an external factor that’s hard to control and requires cross-border dialogue and cooperation,” Sunisa explained further.
Jan agreed with these findings and pointed out: “Today there’s evidence suggesting the environment here is deteriorating, but what’s still missing is scientific, empirical proof. Visually, we can say that the burning ground destroys the mangrove forest and spreads microplastics into the sea, but no relevant agency has moved to prove the impact clearly and concretely for people to see. This has become a knowledge gap that, if filled, would help a great deal. We need water quality testing in the natural water sources around the burning ground, microplastic testing in local marine life, and other scientific analysis to make the severity of the problem clearer.”
03 – The Solution Requires Knowledge and Funding
Since everyone knows about the problem, the question arises: has there been any effort to make Puyu less wasteful? Sunisa revealed: “Even though everyone seems to have grown used to the problem, it’s not that no one is doing anything. At least three groups are trying to create change. The first is the local government, which has tried designing activities or campaigns to get people to reduce plastic use — opening enrollment for island shops to join, where customers who buy something and decline a plastic bag get a coupon to drop into a raffle box. The local government draws 12 winners a month. The result: at least 500 fewer bags used per month. There’s also a community waste bank activity, where the SAO sets up a stall to buy recyclable waste from people once a month, but this hasn’t lasted long due to limited storage space, forcing them to buy and resell to the mainland on the same day.
“The second group is the school, which set up a waste bank buying recyclables from students. The response has been good — children prepare with their families to bring waste to sell, making it easier for the campaign to reach the household level.”
“The last group is the waste collectors — just two people, Pak Cik and Bang Mat — who mostly sort at the end point, meaning they collect the waste first and then sort it before burning, separating cans, plastic, and metal. However, without a clear, systematic process, it must be admitted they can’t sort everything every day.”
Sunisa emphasized: “We all know this level of effort still isn’t enough to manage waste sustainably, because most of it targets awareness alone — while the system, knowledge base, and budget are still lacking and waiting to be filled in.”
Meanwhile, a satisfaction survey on Puyu’s waste management revealed four areas people were least satisfied with and want addressed urgently: the number of waste bins — most feel there aren’t enough and that they aren’t clearly sorted by type; the waste management system — most feel Puyu still lacks a system that’s safe for health and environmentally friendly; support for villagers transporting recyclable waste off the island — even though some people try to sort recyclables, taking them off the island is difficult due to high costs; and finally, insufficient measures to reduce plastic use on the island — some people noted that compared with other issues, like loose cattle in public areas (which carries serious, concrete penalties), plastic and other waste problems rely more on requesting cooperation than on enforcement. They believe stricter measures could help reduce plastic use.
04 – “An Effective Waste Management System”: The First Thing Puyu Residents Want to See Developed
Asked what they’d like relevant agencies and the public to do more of, over 64.4% wanted more widespread community waste-sorting points, and over 57.7% felt there should be a proper recycling management system. Meanwhile, 52.8% felt there should be a waste system that can replace burning. Clearly, the three things Puyu residents most want expedited are all systemic issues.
Next came measures and supporting activities: over 47.7% felt there should be clearer measures for people who dump waste in the wrong place or into the sea, and over 39.9% supported reducing or banning single-use foam or plastic. Respondents also wanted educational activities on the impacts of waste and how to participate in managing it.
05 – The “Incinerator”: A New Solution That Leaves People Out of the Decision
Before leaving Puyu, Jan rode his motorcycle with a sidecar to a large open area where the topsoil had been leveled — a place he himself wasn’t sure represented opportunity, salvation, or an even heavier disaster.
“In the next few years, this will become a waste incineration plant.”
“The local government has already prepared the site and various plans — all that’s left is the budget. According to the plan, they’ll fill the land, build a structure, and purchase an incinerator. Closing the burning ground and moving to burn at this new plant would certainly help solve the problem of waste flowing into the sea and help restore the mangrove forest. But there’s also concern that if the incinerator they purchase doesn’t meet standards, or if it lacks proper management, it could create other problems — jumping from the frying pan into the fire — especially dust and toxic smoke, such as benzene and dioxins from burning plastic, which can cause cancer.”
Sunisa acknowledged “The incinerator may affect the environment and people’s health, but it’s the best option for the island right now, given all the constraints. Personally, I don’t agree with going back to basic landfill burial, because the soil here is mostly mud — dig down and you hit water. If waste is buried, leachate could seep into the water people use for daily consumption. That said, relevant agencies are trying to place the incinerator as far from the community as possible, to minimize people’s exposure to pollution.”
However, what’s still missing from the process of building the waste incineration plant is “public participation” — giving people a voice and a role in the decision.
Download the policy brief on Puyu Island waste management (Thai PDF)
This work was supported by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) under the COAST Project (Collaborative Actions for Strengthening Thai CSOs’ Participation in Tackling Climate Change, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion).
Last Updated on July 11, 2026
