Use the law against litterers, 'consciousness' won't work

August 31, 2023 | 04:00 pm PT
Use the law against litterers, 'consciousness' won't work
A man throws away food and drink packaging in a public place in Thu Duc City, May 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran
Readers say the trash dumping problem in Vietnam is getting worse and there must be more strict punishments against it.

"Everyone wants to get rid of their garbage as quickly as possible. You can throw it anywhere, few people really care to make it neat. In the past, when I lived in an apartment, the garbage room was designed with two layers of doors to prevent the smell from coming out. Between those two doors was a space less than one square meter. There were lazy people who only opened the outer door and threw their garbage into in-between space, not bothering to open the inner door to put the garbage in the bin. In the area where I live now, instead of going to the alley where there are garbage trucks available, or leaving garbage bags neatly in front of their houses for waste workers to collect, many people bring their garbage to the children's playground close by, forming a garbage dump there. I don't know if people find it awkward to keep bringing their family's unclean things to litter in public places like that?"
Anh Tu

"A neighbor who lives across the street keeps dumping her garbage in front of my house. At first, I didn't know because the whole family went to work from early morning to evening. But one day when the waste workers did not collect garbage in the afternoon, I came home from work and found a huge pile of unfamiliar garbage in front of my house. My two little children asked innocently: "Why is there so much garbage in front of our house? Someone must have dropped it there." I don't know if my neighbor was embarrassed to hear it?
Sang Vo

"The trash company has a collection schedule and people are supposed to leave their trash at the right place for it to be picked up. But many people just ignore this. They just bring the trash when they go out and throw it anyplace they find convenient. There should be strict punishments for these acts."
Petopham

"People’s habit of littering and throwing garbage is getting worse. About two decades ago, people would wait for the garbage truck to come knocking to bring their trash out, now every few tens of meters on the street, there is an open pile of garbage. People don't bring garbage out at a fixed hour, but everyone just does it as they like. Whoever buys a house now has to carefully observe whether there is a garbage dump nearby because once people have a habit of dumping garbage in a place, it is extremely difficult to change. My friend had to hire a security guard 24 hours a day for three months to prevent people from dumping trash in front of her new house. Littering on every street in a big city is rare in developed countries. You don’t see it in either rural nor urban China."
Jemisha

"Consciousness is a luxury, so it is necessary to use the law. There should be strong enough punishments to reduce littering. Now cameras are everywhere, it's easy to catch violations. If anyone is caught littering in the wrong place, they should be punished with community service for a few months, a heavy fine, and their identity published around the neighborhood or on social networks."
Doctor X

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