TRASH GETS TRULY : THAILAND

CAMPERS leave trash, but it follows them home. Thai government mails the garbage back to a group now barred from a park.

Officials in Thailand  had an unorthodox approach to deal with visitors who left a tent filled with litter in a national park : ''mail the trash to the offenders''.

The country's environment minister said that he wanted to call attention a garbage problem at Khao Yai National Park that endangers animals that could eat the litter while foraging for food. He vowed in a Facebook post last week to track down anyone responsible for littering in the Park.

''I will pick up every single piece of  your trash, pack them well in a box and mail it to your home as a souvenir,'' the minister Varawar Silpa-archa, said in the post. He also posted photos of a delivery box containing a transparent trash bag filled with used plastic eater bottles, sofa cans, torn packs of chips and sunflower seeds.

Thai officials said they had, indeed, mailed the box of trash to campers who had left waste in a tent they abandoned. The special package came with a pointed message for the group, whose members have been placed on a black-list barring them from returning to the park for overnight visits.

''You have forgotten some of your belongings at the Khao Yai National Park,'' read a note to the campers, who have not been publicly identified, that was placed on the clear trash bag. ''Please let us return these to you.''

The move by the Thai authorities comes amid global efforts to reduce the environmental impact of trash and curb the use of plastic. Activists are increasingly sounding the alarm, as garbage continues to clog oceans, showing up in the stomachs of dead wales in countries like Indonesia and Spain.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for example, covers an estimated surface area of 617,750 square miles. Scientists have studied five such accumulations : one in the Indian ocean, two in the Atlantic Ocean, and two in the Pacific.

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational research on Trash and the World, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Tiffany May.