For example. Go buy a bunh mi and they wrap it in a bag, and place it in a grocery bag (to hang on your scooter). Want a pressed sugar cane drink? Plastic cup, plastic lid, straw and plastic bag.
To your point since there is no trash pickup (it’s usually an old lady that comes at 4am in each district with a cart) there is discards everywhere. Especially in rivers and the like. These are all local things. The culture there is much of a porch culture that you hang out and talk. Each house often has a shop of some type that the tenant lives above and has a “hustle” to make money. So it’s not one where folks go get weekly groceries or whatnot. You want dinner you go get whatever you want, bunh mi, pho, or broken rice and pork? etc from said shop. You want rambutans, you go get some. Cooking and the like is often for special occasions.
The trash problem is huge there. And when I asked they often blamed it on being ocean trash from the west. Even when asking about the trash issues on the Mekong at the northern end of the delta.
While they also burn their fields around the same times annually for crops, they constantly burn trash in much of the country and the smog issue is real in many parts, except maybe Da Nang which is a special case and in fact that provincial leader (was quite popular and successful) was promoted to the capital and then mysteriously died.
Fun fact. Vietnamese don’t have a word for smog. They call it fog. I actually got sick when in Hanoi and i am 50/50 on whether it was from the smog to be honest (the only folks in my party that didn’t get sick there were the folks that lived in Vietnam).
It wasn’t western trash on the banks of their rivers or in the city corners.
No doubt there may be some trash that does cross the oceans and hit their coast. But it’s by no means the bulk of the source.
Frankly that trip somewhat made me aware that there isn’t much European and US can do for pollution at a global scale. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try, but that the indias and chinas and Vietnam’s dgaf and are working on the day to day and don’t have a huge concern for the big picture since there really isn’t time in the day. So we are pissing in the wind of sorts, though we should focus on keeping our nations and beaches and rivers cleaner.
That's exactly it. That said, I'm living in southern californai now, we have a recycling bin that people just throw trash into. Nobody here cares either.
Heck, this is one of the compost bins! https://imgur.com/cdPEo0i
During my time on the motorbike with my gf, we made a huge effort to not use plastic. It was a struggle. We brought our own cups, reusable bags, etc... we'd give them a cup for that delicious sugar cane, then they'd pour it in a plastic cup because that is what they were so trained on, remember we gave them a cup, pour it in our cup and then immediately toss the plastic cup. I can't tell you how many times that happened.
> I actually got sick when in Hanoi and i am 50/50 on whether it was from the smog to be honest (the only folks in my party that didn’t get sick there were the folks that lived in Vietnam).
100% is was from the pollution there. Summers are brutal in Hanoi.
Perhaps it's for ensuring consistency (of product volume, ratio of ingredients, etc) for all their products.
It comes from a machine that squeezes the sugar cane directly into a cup.
He didn't assign blame; you did.
All he did was observe the pretty commonly known fact that plastic pollution is out of control in the region. You're the one who started pointing fingers.
Whats this?
> They could easily tell people to cut down their plastic/trash usage...Profit/corruption
I dont think thks would work.
I come from another region with the same problem. I know people who manage local factories that produce food and drink wrapped in single-use practic. They buy machines from Italy, they import bottles, caps, everything. Local suppliers look to what west does and they copy.
Imagine that tomorrow, overnight, US and EU governments clamp down on their companies domestically and stop producing single use plastic. It will be gone from developing world withing a few years.
I think the problem of plastic is problem of industry. It cannot be solved through invividual action. It has to be solved in the factories that produce this crap by the billions.
100% it won't change in Vietnam unless the government there does some strict mandates and education. It doesn't matter what the US/EU does. You really have to spend time in the country to get an understanding of how it is literally ingrained in their culture to just dump trash wherever they want and use plastic endlessly. They really don't see the problem with that. Once it gets into the culture, it'll take many generations to extract it.
I recall a few years ago it took a couple weeks in USA for people to shut themselves into their homes, fear being close to their neighbors, and wear face masks at grocery stores and while driving in their own cars. Sufficient fear will cause mass obeying and hating those who don't obey. It can be done again.
Are you maybe saying it a cultural thing? As in, it would be too difficult to convince people to pay somewhat higher taxes and then adhere to littering/dumping/burning laws?
It really has nothing to do with money since it is a communist country. The government could decide to allocate resources (ie: people) towards dealing with the mess. That's effectively what they do in the cities.
In Saigon, I lived on Truong Sa in a 5th floor apartment. This street is along a river running through the middle of the city. Every day, there was several boats that would go up and down collecting the trash that people would dump into the river. All day long, I could watch people just stop their bike, get off, walk over to the river and dump their trash into it. The lazy ones would just dump their trash on the street or in the gutters, which tend to back up during rains and cause more flooding.
oh dear, thats so gross
Picture of some random beach somewhere... whole entire coastline is trash and Vietnam is shaped like and the size of California... https://imgur.com/fp6D7Ca
When I went to the world heritage site, Ha Long Bay, I went out in a kayak and picked up a whole bag of trash. I didn't even need to take a bag with me because I just found plenty floating around to use.
This is also a country that still eats dogs (and cats) and really anything that moves. You won't ever get them to stop making waste. https://imgur.com/ItvSF6T
Is it? I pay for both recycling and waste collection, per bin. It's not via my taxes
https://voiceofsandiego.org/2022/11/18/san-diego-dumps-centu...
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=4e484f24-4885...
Sure, developing countries don't have the infrastructure to recycle. The point of criticism here is reduce.
Datapoint: I'm vietnamese and think the use of plastic is unnecessary. It doesn't take much education to understand that plastic is bad, especially when the government has no hesititation to govern people's thought.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/otosaigon.news
[2] https://www.facebook.com/groups/otosaigon.news/posts/1965346...
The real contribution to plastic waste in Vietnam, is just 99% of Vietnamese.
Anyone can set up a shop anywhere in Vietnam and they all hand out insane amounts of plastic.
Even the charity work I did there to help feed people amounted to filling up plastic bags to hand out.
If an undeveloped lot isn’t checked on, it will quickly become a dumping ground for neighborhood trash. And at least they put it somewhere other than just on the ground.
And there is nothing stopping the country from having a public trash collection service. Labor is cheap. It’s just lack of political will: corruption why it’s not done. Plus lack of enforcement to punish people who litter.
Singapore is clean not because people don’t litter (they do to a surprising extent). But the law is vigorously enforced (with warnings then fines, then mandated trash pick up duty as punishment), but also widespread and frequent cleaning. Most busy areas get trash collection twice a day.
No reason why Vietnam couldn’t do it.
I think this allocation of blame is unfair. I moved from a developing country - the plastic culture originated from the west. The difference is that developing world does not have the massive taxpayer funded garbage collection that is present in the west. And does not have the rigorous fines for fly tipping. And cannot pay other developing countries, like Philippines, to illegally take our trash.
Westerns norms are to offload the trash problem onto the taxpayer - we just don't realise we are subsidizing PepsiCo. The problem is hidden. And in India/Vietnam/etc. the taxpayer can't afford this subsidy, so the problem is plain to see. But both societies suffer.
Once western industry adopts single use plastic everywhere, it is really difficult for a small developing country to avoid it. Firstly, half the products consumed in developing countries are produced by western companies, or designed by western companies and produced locally/in China, say Coke bottles.
Even if you consider local manufacturing, imagine you are starting local production of cheese or whatever. You are going to import western industrial machinery, that is setup to package things into plastic. You are going to hire western consultant to help you configure the production line. You will import western best practices. You might even have to import packaging materials.