Phuket's main rubbish disposal centre has stopped accepting waste, and there is no date for when it will start again. Phuket City Municipality, which runs the island's central landfill and incinerator, announced on 8 November 2026 that it was suspending deliveries from every local council and their waste contractors, temporarily and until further notice.

Why the landfill closed its gates

The municipality called it the site's seventh waste crisis. Rubbish arriving each day had outgrown the space available for burial, so it brought in extra heavy machinery to reshape the landfill, and garbage trucks had been queuing far longer than usual for about a week. On the morning of 8 November, several trucks that would not wait dumped their loads on the access road, blocking the vehicles behind them. The municipality said it had to stop all deliveries to clear and prepare the site and to agree new arrangements with the councils and contractors involved.

The numbers behind the crisis

According to Mayor Suppachoke Laongphet, waste from 19 local administrative organisations and other bodies now arrives at a rate of roughly 1,200 to 1,300 tonnes a day. The municipality says the landfill holds more than 1.2 million tonnes against a stated capacity of 900,000 tonnes, leaving no room for conventional burial. Its existing incinerator handles about 700 tonnes a day. A second one, now under construction, is expected to start in June 2027 and add around 500 tonnes a day, which would still fall short of the top end of today's daily volume.

What it means for residents

The notice is aimed at the councils and contractors that truck rubbish to the centre, not at households directly, and it does not say how kerbside collection will change. In practice, collections run by your tessaban (municipality) or OrBorTor (subdistrict council) may slow or be rescheduled while the site is out of action. If bins on your soi are not being emptied, your local council office or its official page is the place to check. As of 10 November, no reopening date had been announced.

The mayor has asked households, businesses and government offices to cut waste at source, especially by separating food scraps and other organic material from general rubbish. For condo and villa residents, that means using any recycling or food-waste bins your building provides and keeping bagged rubbish secured until it is collected.