Gardens or Garbage?

Living in Vietnam makes me appreciate how far we have come in taking care of our trash in the US, at least in the Seattle area.  I can remember as a kid seeing cans, bottles and papers along the road and in our parks.  Over the years there have been many efforts to deter littering, so much that it is politically incorrect (thankfully so) for anyone to toss their garbage anywhere but in a garbage can and to make sure that recyclables get recycled.  Our kids grew up with recycling.  It is second nature for them to separate the trash and recycling and for the most part they are thoughtful about the trash they create, or don’t create. 

In Vietnam there are very few garbage cans on the street and recycling is not the norm. I did see one garbage can in Ho Chi Minh City when we were there last week, usually they are nonexistent. Trash is put on the curb of the street. The garbage is then swept up and collected daily by the garbage ladies, it is almost always women who get this lovely job, hmmm.  It is the same in neighborhoods. We put our plastic bag of trash out on the sidewalk every day for the trash lady to collect.  Usually before she arrives two other ladies ride by on their bicycles and go through our trash to take out whatever they can sell – automatic recycling. Once the garbage is collected it is taken to sorting areas. As far as I can tell those that collect the trash go through each bag and sort it.  I haven’t been able to find out what happens next.  Unfortunately our garbage lady hasn't been very regular and the garbage collects until the homeowners (or in our case, the cleaning ladies) move the trash from in front of the homes to one of the empty lots or until they burn the trash. I haven’t been able to bring myself to do either; burn the trash or dump it in the empty lot across the street. 

There is a wonderful exception to the empty lot as a trash collection site. Many lots have been taken over for gardening. I love seeing these impromptu gardens that spring up everywhere.  Besides the empty lots I have seen the gardens in traffic circles and sidewalks, practically any spare green space that is plantable is planted.  

But change is happening in developing countries, especially in Vietnam. Recently John received an invitation inviting us to attend an event which was partnering with a volunteer group, Youths for a Green Economy. The event was organized by a composting and recycling entrepreneur who is working in a few of the local communes to get the homeowners to compost their food waste and recycle their plastic trash.  We had very little idea of what they were doing until we arrived at the event.

Our host for this event was Mr. Diep. I want to know more about Mr. Diep and his passion is to change Vietnam to become a country with much less waste.   He has developed a product which will help the food waste break down faster so that the farmers in the communes will be more likely to compost their food waste.  He has also started a recycling center for plastics.   Mr. Diep’s volunteers went from house to house in two groups, John in one group with Mr. Diep and I was in the other group with John’s project assistant Ms. Nhung who translated for me. 

It was such a wonderful day.  I loved seeing how passionate, although somewhat frustrated, that these young people are.  Changing society is difficult and we could only relay our stories on how things were in the old days in the US and what they are now.  There is so much opportunity right now for change and investment in this country.  It will be slow and it will be frustrating because there is so much change that needs to happen, but it is so exciting to be here at this time.  We are extremely lucky that we are invited to see some of these events and see the change that is happening.