Keeping the beaches clean

Some 100 officers, soldiers and youth union members of the Con Dao Border Post Youth Union and its partner youth unions in the southeastern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau recently cleaned up and collected garbage along more than 1km of the Con Dao Island district from ​​Pier 914 to the new wharf in Con Son Bay. In the province’s Vung Tau City, other units collected garbage and planted 200 trees along the a 2km-stretch of road from Nguyen Huu Canh Road to the Chi Linh tourist site.

In mid-January 2022, hundreds of volunteers cleaned up the beach in Tinh Ky Commune of Quang Ngai Province’s Quang Ngai City. Nguyen Huu Bao Linh, Deputy Secretary of the Tinh Ky Commune Youth Union, said that apart from collecting waste, the volunteers encouraged local residents to keep the beach clean and beautiful.

Maintaining green tourist sites

Another volunteer group recently launched a campaign to clean up and collect garbage along 1km of beach in Quang Ngai Province and plant more than 5,000 willow trees on My Khe Beach.

In July 2019, this group launched the “Be kind to Sa Can” and “Be kind to Tra Bong River” programs, and cleaned up the beach flooded with rubbish in Hai Ninh Village (Binh Thanh Commune in Quang Ngai Province’s Binh Son District), encouraged local residents to put waste in designated collection spots and contribute to turning polluted areas into green tourist sites.

Not only Vietnamese people but also foreign tourists have participated in plastic waste control activities to protect the marine environment. In mid-June 2021, a group of Japanese tourists and staff members of the Red River Tours Company dived to collect wastes in the seabed in the southern part of Phu Quoc Island. Foreign visitors have welcomed such nature exploration and waste collection trips.

Kaneko, a member of the diving team, said Vietnam is endowed with beautiful landscapes including the “pearl island” of Phu Quoc with pristine beaches. However, some local people and tourists lack environmental protection awareness and throw waste on the beach and into the ocean, including waste that will need thousands of years to decompose, such as plastic bottles or plastic bags, seriously affecting the flora and fauna in the sea and the people’s living environment. Nature-loving tourists like him want to change people's bad habits and raise community awareness of environmental protection.

Thanh Tam