While garbage vehicles never smell sweet, Pattaya residents often complain that the city’s trash trucks stink particularly badly.
Pramot Sabsang, Pattaya’s director of resources and environment, often finds himself explaining why city garbage trucks smell so bad they actually stink up half the soi they’re on. He says it’s all about the water.
The city is now installing reserve tanks on garbage trucks to corral the extra sludge that accumulates during the rainy season.
Each of the 20 trucks Pattaya owns and the 30 operated on behalf of the city by Invest Management Co. are equipped with water tanks to catch the myriad of pungent liquids seeping out of trash bins.
But during rainy season, he said, rainwater gets into garbage cans – largely, he says, because residents neglect to cover their bins – and the trucks’ water tanks quickly fill and overflow. The result is slow-moving smelly green monsters leaving a snail-like trail of som tam-and-dirty-diaper-flavored runoff.
Pramot said the city is now installing reserve tanks on garbage trucks to corral the extra sludge. The city will also confine garbage collection to 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., with trucks making two rounds each day.
In the end, however, it comes down to Pattaya’s residents to do a better job of managing their refuse and cleaning their property, Pramot said.
“The Pattaya area has seen a very rapid increase in population and now produces 300-350 tons of garbage a day,” he explained. “People have to realize they have a responsibility to focus on cleaning exteriors and think more about refuse left in bins and not littering. This will help garbage collectors work faster and better.”
