About us
Trash Treasure Tao is a Koh Tao community enterprise helping residents, businesses, event organisers and visitors turn everyday waste into useful value. The center provides a practical local system for sorting, purchasing and collecting recyclable materials, while promoting refills, reuse and shared learning to reduce waste at its source.
It also helps the community prepare materials correctly and connect them with suitable recycling destinations, an especially important task for an island where transport and storage are challenging. Its activities and operations are supported by the Koh Tao Tourism Association, local administrative authorities, Koh Tao Municipality, Ban's Conservation Learning Center, Koh Tao, local businesses, the Koh Tao community and other organisations.
Trash Treasure Tao was established by representatives of the Koh Tao community to promote circular economy practices on the island. As tourism and local activity grow, reducing single-use waste and improving waste management are essential for protecting Koh Tao’s environment and supporting a sustainable local economy.
The early foundation of the project, including construction support, essential equipment and basic training, came from the MA-RE-DESIGN project. This support helped the community prepare a practical base for a waste bank, refill station, learning center and reusable dishware service.
MA-RE-DESIGN helped Trash Treasure Tao move from an idea into a community facility by supporting the first stage of setup, equipment and training.
This foundation made it possible to begin services that combine practical waste sorting, refill behaviour and reuse systems.
The space brings together a waste bank, refill station and learning center for practical waste management.
It is designed as a place where community members, schools, visitors and local teams can learn by doing, not only by reading about waste reduction.
The enterprise also pilots reusable dishware through a deposit-return model to reduce single-use products at events.
The model has been used at island events with cups, plates and bowls that can be borrowed and returned, helping organisers make lower-waste events easier to run.
Koh Tao Earth Day brought together Thai and international residents, local businesses, the diving community and others who love the island. In 2018-2019, the group organised activities and fundraising to support environmental work, including a hoped-for recycling center. COVID-19 and later changes on the island prevented the original plan from moving forward.
The group sees Trash Treasure Tao carrying this vision forward through a practical, community-based recycling system, especially for materials that are difficult or costly to transport off the island.
The group contributed THB 300,000 from funds raised through the initiative to support waste bank staff salaries and day-to-day operations, carrying forward the community’s effort to build a better waste management system for Koh Tao.
The Glass Bring Back project has been a specialised collaboration in glass bottle management within Koh Tao Subdistrict since the MA-RE-DESIGN period, with WWF Thailand connecting the project to Koh Tao.
The project focuses on returning glass bottles and glass food packaging to the recycling system, keeping valuable glass out of general waste. Donated bottles are separated by colour so used glass from the island can re-enter the recycling process correctly. With support from BJC and TBR, this work creates a clearer pathway from community collection to glass packaging recycling on the island.
Beyond glass, the Glass Bring Back project also helps connect other recyclable materials to appropriate recycling systems, including milk and juice cartons as well as low-value materials such as stretch and shrink films.
Surat Jirapat Co., Ltd. supports Trash Treasure Tao as an advisor on recyclable waste purchasing, sorting standards and downstream destinations for materials collected on Koh Tao.
This guidance helps the waste bank separate materials more clearly, understand market requirements and prepare recyclables in a way that improves their chance of entering appropriate recycling channels.
For an island community, this kind of technical and market knowledge is important because transportation, storage and final destinations all affect whether recyclable materials can be managed responsibly and sustainably.