September 1, 2023 | 07:00 GMT+7

A man throws food and drink packaging in a public place in Thu Duc city, May 2022. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran
Readers say Vietnam’s waste dumping problem is getting worse and there needs to be tougher penalties against it.
“Everyone wants to get rid of their rubbish as quickly as possible. You can throw it anywhere, few people really care to make it clean. In the past, when I lived in an apartment, the trash room was designed with two layers of doors to prevent the smell from coming out. Between these two doors, there was a space of less than one square meter. There were lazy people who only opened the outer door and threw their garbage in the space in between, without bothering to open the interior door to put in. In the neighborhood where I currently live, instead of going to the alley where garbage trucks are located, or leaving garbage bags neatly stored in front of their house so the garbage collectors can collect it, many people take their waste to the trash.” There is a children’s play area nearby, forming a landfill there. I don’t know if people find it embarrassing to keep throwing their unclean family belongings in public places like this?”
Mr. You
“A neighbor who lives across the street keeps throwing her garbage in front of my house. At first, I didn’t know it because the whole family was going to work from early morning until evening. But one day when the garbage collectors didn’t pick up the garbage In the afternoon, I came home from work and found a huge pile of unknown garbage outside my house. My two small children asked innocently, “Why are there so many 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 litter collection company has a collection schedule and people are supposed to leave their litter in the right place to be picked up. But a lot of people ignore it. They just bring the litter when they go out and throw it away where they deem it practical. … There should be strict penalties for such acts.”
Petopham
“People’s habit of littering is getting worse. About twenty years ago, people waited for the garbage truck to come knocking to take out their trash. Today, every few tens of meters on the street there is an open pile of garbage. “People don’t take out the garbage at a fixed time, but everyone does what they want. Whoever buys a house must now carefully monitor whether there is a landfill nearby, because in the past people used to throw their trash in one place., it’s extremely difficult to change. My friend had to hire a 24 hour security guard for three months to stop people from throwing trash in front of her new house. Trash on every street of a big city are rare in developed countries. You don’t see it in rural China or urban China.”
To summarize
“Conscience is a luxury, so it is necessary to use the law. There should be sufficiently severe penalties to reduce waste. Now that cameras are everywhere, it is easy to detect violations. If someone is caught throwing waste in the wrong place, he must be punished with community service for a few months, a heavy fine and publication of their identity in the neighborhood or on social networks.”
Doctor