Let’s reduce waste! opened yesterday, is free to enter, and will run until August 31 at L’Espace.
Items on display are made from waste materials or recycled products and aim to show how consumerism can be harmful to the environment and challenge current thinking and perspectives. There will also be an interactive space for children and information about how individuals and organizations can reduce their waste.
The event is part of a larger project about the quality of life in cities, which is being carried out by PRX-Vietnam, the Hanoi People’s Committee and the French Development Agency (AFD), VnExpress reports.
The municipal People’s Committee recently developed a new program to combat the overuse of plastic bags across the city. By 2020, the committee plans to drastically reduce the amount of plastic bags in Hanoi and increase eco-friendly practices in industrial complexes by 60–70%.
Vietnam is one of the top five contributors to plastic waste pollution in the world, ranked just below China, Indonesia and the Philippines. Hanoi and Saigon alone produce about 80 tons of plastic waste a day. In Hanoi, the consequences of plastic waste can be felt nearly everywhere. The city relies, informally, on one small town whose de-facto responsibility has become dealing with plastic waste.
