Last Friday marked the Loy Krathong in Thailand, a festival that celebrates a goddess of water and rivers by making small baskets, called krathong, and floating them on the river.
In Bangkok, that’s followed by another tradition: The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration goes out in full force to collect the tributes from the river that is a major Bangkok artery of commerce and transportation. This year they started at 8 p.m. Friday and finished by 5 a.m. Saturday.
The idea of the cleanup is not so surprising; what is surprising is the effort that goes into counting and classifying the krathongs. This year, BMA said, it collected 514,590 from the Chao Phraya river and the city’s canals, down 19.57% from last year.
The report also says that 98.39% were made from natural materials, while 1.61% were made of styrofoam. That’s a drop of more than 50% in the styrofoam total from the previous year.
