By Dominque Avis – 2 week volunteer

Ban Naklang is a small village located 4 hours’ drive away from the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Its home to roughly two hundred villagers – most of which works on the fields, tourist industry, study in the city or live in other villages that they marry into. The village is also home to a variety of animals which include dogs, cats, pigs, buffalos, chickens and roosters.

There is very little understanding of recycling and waste control in the village, as a result there are empty glass and plastic bottles, and food wrappers scattered around the village. So, we at Kindred Spirit Elephant Sanctuary (KSES) have taken it upon ourselves to implement an environmental clean-up program within the village, this program will educate to locals on:

KSES host a litter clean up in the village once a week, this will include walking around the village with the villagers picking up any rubbish which is found on the floor and sorting the rubbish to recyclable and non-recyclable.

It is important to keep this village clean from unwanted packaging because it prevents the animals living in the village from digesting and getting seriously ill, also some plastics are not biodegradable which means it will take a long sometime for the molecules to break down and return to the earth – during this breakdown process the plastic could release poisonous gases and toxicants, which could affect the surround environment.

The KSES environmental clean up program has seen some great success over the years we have been running it and has had the chance to visit schools within the area, giving talks and doing workshop with the local people.