While the world continues towards its sustainability goals, many local independent organizations are also taking the task into their own hands. From sustainable music festivals to tree planting projects, these initiatives are leading examples of how everyone can pitch in and do their part.
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Made up of some 16,000 young professionals, this project is dedicated to preventing Thailand’s trees from being cleared for urban development. In 2014 they ran a competition for citizens to nominate Thailand’s best tree and designate “Heritage Trees” that ought to be protected. More recently, they've collaborated with Fab Farm to launch a “100KM Market,” focused on selling food sourced from no more than 100km away while raising awareness for tree protection.
This project started as a series of cooking schools for underprivileged children with an aim to teach them about nutrition, food waste prevention and the basics of cooking. More recently, they launched the Courageous Bangkok side project, which invites the city’s top chefs to join the sustainability drive in their own kitchens. Their event at the end of last year invited some of the city’s top restaurants including Asia’s 50 Best Restaurant triple-time-winner Gaggan along with other top names like Bo.lan, Le Du and Quince for a huge cook-off to promote sustainable living.
In an initiative to make the city cooler back in 2015, a group of university students invited 30 local celebrities to plant trees around Chiang Mai, share the photos on Facebook and challenge three other people to do the same. The result was a massive trend that spread across social media, leading to more than 5,000 trees being planted around the country. In 2017, the group continues to host tree planting campaigns while also expanding their goals to improving the water system of Chiang Mai’s canals, too.
Run by two sisters, this travel project aims to make a sustainable impact on Thailand’s tourism industry by promoting local-run inde-pendent activities. Their latest project, Appear, collaborates with the United Nations Development Program and the BMA to use tourism as a means of saving disappearing neighborhoods around the country, from Bang Lamphu to Hua Takhe, and ultimately preserve culture, support locals with sustainable income, and solve social issues through innovation.
While the words “music festival” and “sustainable” don’t often come paired together, this annual arts and music event aims to change that. Not only is it arguably Thailand’s most trendy festival right now, but it also puts sustainability at its core. For instance, the festival area uses a water filtration system to self-maintain its fields and has its own farm to provide a self-sustaining food outlet. Meanwhile, their stages are built from natural materials such as bamboo, all water bottles sold in the festival are biodegradable, and their events include talks and workshops with local eco heroes who are making an impact.
Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau (TCEB) has joined forces with MICE partners and Sampran Model to launch the ‘Farm to Functions’ project - a smart move for sustainable MICE encouraging MICE entrepreneurs to support organic agricultural products produced by local communities.
This is the first project in the world involving government and private sectors to support the economy of local communities. Like a bridge directly linking organic farms to kitchens in hotels and conference centers, Farm to Functions delivers healthy food to clients, thereby sharpening their competitive advantages and enhancing the public image of MICE entrepreneurs and Thailand as a whole.
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