Thailand tries to tackle 1km-long mass of ocean trash

AFP
Phon Tongmak, a rubber tree farmer (back), rows a boat in floodwaters in his rubber plantation with his friend at Cha-uat district in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, southern Thailand, in this January 18, 2017 photo. (Reuters)

BANGKOK: Thai authorities are trying to clean up a massive, 1-kilometer long tangle of trash, officials said Friday, calling it the largest garbage heap to float through the Kingdom’s waters.
The mass of debris was estimated to weigh some 300 tons, said Sopon Thongdee, deputy director of Thailand’s Marine and Coastal Resources Department.
“In all my working life I have never seen an amount of garbage this huge,” he told AFP, adding that it was first spotted off of southern Chumpon province and has since floated north.
Authorities believe much of the detritus was carried into the ocean by floods that swept through Thailand’s south in January.
Four ships have been mobilized to retrieve the trash — a task made more difficult as the cluster began to break off into smaller chunks on Friday, said Sopon.
Thailand is one of the world’s top consumers of plastic bags and a major contributor to ocean waste.
In a recent report, US-based advocacy group Ocean Conservancy estimated that Thailand was one of just five countries responsible for as much as 60 percent of plastic waste dumped into the ocean.