At the start of the year 2008, TAT's Southern Region 4 Director Khun Suwalai Pindrap announced TAT's plan to launch a sustained environmental campaign to make tourism on Phuket greener and cleaner; hence the slogan: “Keep Phuket Clean & Green”

The project commenced with a kayaking exercise for children on January 12, children's day, and TAT officials promised that much more was on the way.

The next phase of TAT's campaign has just been launched. Launched at Jungceylon on Valentine's Day, the “Be clean Be love Patong” project sees TAT joining hands with the Patong Hotel Association and the Jungceylon shopping mall.

The campaign's goal is to significantly reduce the accumulation of plastic waste on Phuket by promoting the use of cloth shopping bags among tourists and hotel guests. Guests will be offered cloth bags for the duration of their stay on Phuket, and will be encouraged to help the Green effort by using these bags on their shopping jaunts. The tourists will be requested to return the bags to the hotel reception at the time of their departure.

K. Runjuan Tongrut, Assistant Director of TAT Southern Region 4 told the Post that the idea behind promoting the cotton bag is to use it to replce the plastic bag currently being used, and also to rope in the tourists into the effort to keep Phuket clean and green. “They can use the bag when they go shopping, or to the beach and in this way they can also feel a part of a positive movement to help Phuket be a better place.”

With TAT taking the initiative to launch the campaign, it is hoped that other governmental organisations will cotton-on and launch their own measures to curb the growing menace of garbage and plastic waste on the island, and hopefully, this could lead to the eventual phasing out of plastic bags, as is the practice in many environmentally conscious countries.

To phase the plastic out, options will be needed and TAT's cotton bags will for now set a good example.

The President of Patong Hotels Association, Khun Krisada Tantrakul explained that the campaign has resulted from worries over the current environment on Phuket and global concerns on the issue. “I would like to see instilled in the locals and tourists who come to visit a sense of pride and belonging with this movement. It's just a beginning- this is a small project- but if everyone in Phuket and people around the world became more aware and made efforts to hep the environment, I think our world could be a much greener place.

“We will initially produce 5,000 cotton bags and distribute these among the members of the Patong Hotels Association which has more than 30 hotels. About 30,000 baht has been pumped into this project, financial support has come from 6 organizations,” Khun Krisada told the Phuket Post.

“We will allocate the cotton bags to the hotels according to the number of the rooms, each room will have a bag. Every member will provide information to their guests and even locals, promoting the use of the cotton bags to help to help the environment on Phuket and in our own small way, the world. We hope that initiatives like this will make Phuket even more beautiful and will make people want to return to Phuket again and again.”