Dear Friends of Summer In Phuket,

With exception of this last weeks ASEAN meeting where we were battered by a big storm it has been a truly spectacular year to date, with only a few rainy days, wonderful sunsets and clean beaches!

Our cleaning campaign again hits the Island on August 6th, and we ask that all of you get involved. Patong will separately clean for an hour at 9am on August 11th, and we invite participants from all over the island to mark the date and come give Patong a hand.

We have been busy on several fronts:

1. Organizing strong beach committees to ensure the cleanups have longevity. Kamala has two full time beach cleaners paid by private sector, and this strategy is about to be followed by a number of other areas.
2. Supporting each beach with custom Thai and English flyers detailing the cleanups and what individuals can do at home, now broadening the reach from initially just the Hotel industry to the general community.
3. Working closely with the local government to support cleanups, better prepare beach areas for tourists in the morning & support better beach signage.
4. Preparing an educational strategy and documents plus a “Pineapple Eyes” Quiz for kids and a PDF for schools to integrate eco awareness into their program.
5. Preparing specific Industry best practice PDFs for Hotels, Estates, Contractors & Retailers.
6. Working with senior officials to launch a plastic bag reduction strategy.
7. Designing a few different styles of REUSE shopping bags that will be distributed across the Island and through Hotels to guests.
8. We have designed the recycling stations that are being manufactured by John Underwood and will implement the first ones next month.

The website www.summerinphuket.com is about to get some new applications and our first webcam is almost operational. To get good streaming images at a reasonable price has been a challenge. We also have reworked our weather icons to more accurately and honestly reflect the weather. Given the diversity of the weather in Phuket from North to South and East to West at any given minute this is not an easy task which will help with webcams.

We ask you follow the simple steps at home to make your world more energy conservative and save you money. Please make a point of broadening this campaign to the community and to support the beach cleanups by emailing details to all your Phuket friends and reach out to your family, colleagues and neighbors.

The ASEAN meeting polished Phuket nicely into her namesake the Pearl of the Andaman, and its up to Phuket residents to now keep that momentum going.