There is no doubt that batteries hold dangerous acids and toxins which are harmful for people and the environment. Still less is known about actual options how to deposit batteries properly in Thailand. Thus, Tuk and I spent a day trying to investigate this issue and finding a way of discarding and recycling batteries.
We started going through official channels and found - surprisingly fast - the way to do it right. Khun Koid from the municipal office in Phuket informed us that Phuket has the only discarding facility for batteries and offered us to be the contact for a battery discarding system and even show us around at our next visit to Phuket. Batteries cannot be recycled but the can be taken apart and especially the valuable metals can be reused while the toxins have to be stored in secure place.
Having this contact we started making containers with an informative label to hand out to businesses in Khao Lak. We were hoping to get shops and hotels to collect batteries with our containers, so tourists and locals would be informed and able to bring their used batteries to these collecting points. Wicked Diving would sign responsible for the collection of of the batteries in regular intervals.
When we visited various shops, restaurants and resorts this afternoon the feed-back was very positive. We were even stopped on the road to drop one of the containers with a business owner because she thought it was such a brilliant idea and collected about two kilograms of old batteries at another shop. In total we established six collection points throughout Khao Lak but we are hoping to be able to reach out to even more shops in the area.
For now you can drop your batteries off at following places: at Wicked Diving, at Phu Khao Lak Resort, at the Minimart across the street from Wicked Diving, at Walkers Inn, at the clinic of Dr. Chusak and at Sea Dragon Dive Center. We thank these businesses for their cooperation and their commitment to maintain Khao Lak as the beautiful holiday destination it has been.
If you are interested you can view and download our flyer - In Thai and English and adapt to you needs. We hope you do!
To learn more about this and other projects that Wicked Diving does to improve the local community - check out our Ethical Diving pages. When you dive with us, you help support these projects. 2% of all our receipts go towards projects that improve our local community and ecosystems.
-Wicked Diving, Khao Lak
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