Meaningful green campaigns in HCMC showing slow-down signs

An outdated garbage collection vehicle is working at a waste gathering point in Long Truong Ward of Thu Duc City (Photo: SGGP)

After drinking from a plastic cup, a man blatantly tossed it at the nearby bridge-end despite the surprise of his daughter. He explained that there was waste there already, so one more cup was not a big deal, plus sanitation workers could conveniently clean that large waste volume anyway.

With such a mindset, it is not hard to find people deliberately throwing garbage on road curbs, bridge-ends, and even into canals. Each day, workers of HCMC Urban Environment Co. Ltd. have to collect 9-10 tonnes of waste on Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe Canal and 7-8 tonnes on Tan Hoa – Lo Gom Canal.

At the peak time of the movement ‘HCMC dwellers stop littering roads and canals for a clean city and flooding reduction’, series of waste-related campaigns were organized to save the environment. Sadly, until now, not many maintain their operation.

At the beginning of the ‘Say-no to Plastic Bags’ campaign, a lot of supermarkets wholeheartedly replaced plastic bags and elastic bands with banana leaves and ropes from umbrella papyrus for packaging. But then major supermarkets like Winmart, Co-opmart, Bach Hoa Xanh reversed to plastic bags. Many shops used to say no to plastic straws and foam boxes but also came back to that choice after some time, forgetting their promise on selecting stainless steel or paper glasses.

More importantly, the campaign on classifying household waste quickly spread throughout HCMC but then subsided with the same speed. Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai from District 4 recalled that 4 years ago, her family responded to this campaign by equipping two bins and two waste bag packs with different colors to classify garbage. In two weeks, everyone got used to that action. However, when seeing that the waste collector poured both waste bags into one big bin, she felt extremely discouraged and has stopped doing that classification since then.

From 2021, HCMC introduced its waste classification plan with two types (with and without ability to recycle). Nevertheless, the Environment Protection Law 2020 stipulates that household waste must be divided into three types. This has led to various challenges.

Firstly, the technical infrastructure in different localities in HCMC is not consistent. Secondly, waste collectors usually pour all garbage kinds into one bin, which makes the classification a waste of time and reduces the performance of waste classification at source.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Tuan – former Rector of HCMC University of Natural Resources and Environment – proposed that HCMC consider assigning a functional agency to sell waste bags for classification according to regulations. This is expected to ensure fairness and promote waste volume reduction.

The good news is that Thu Duc City and 19 out of 21 districts have helped private garbage collectors enter a cooperative or form a business with legal entity.

Also, there are still inadequacies in converting garbage collection vehicles. HCMC now has more than 7,500 such vehicles, 3,300 of which do not satisfy the applicable standards. From 2021 to May 2023, localities were able to convert 1,450 household solid waste transport means.

Phu Nhuan District worked with Phu Nhuan Environment Cooperative to design and introduced a waste collection vehicle model in July 2022. Unfortunately, this transport means is not eligible for registration since it is a self-made one, and thus not being allowed to participate in traffic.

The district has asked for a pilot scheme of this model here. Meanwhile, vehicle manufacturers in HCMC should give feedback on it or try to produce a similar cost-efficient model. This will ease the mind of private waste collectors.

Standing Deputy Head of the HCMC Party Committee’s Mass Mobilization Division Nguyen Thi Bach Mai shared the results of her organization’s inspection on Directive 19 implementation in different localities. Obviously, the Party’s Committees at various levels have actively used new propaganda methods to raise the awareness of the public about environment protection and sanitation maintenance in public locations.

More solutions should be devised to attract the participation of city dwellers and businesses in this environment protection movement via specific actions like reducing the choice of plastic bags and single-use plastic products.

IT should be better used among state agencies to collect reports and feedback from the community about road and canal littering so that administrative punishments can be timely imposed.