Phu Quoc is the largest island in Vietnam, located in the Gulf of Thailand. There is a great biodiversity on the island, therefore a national park and marine protected areas have been established there. The marine protected areas include seagrass beds in the northeast and a coral reef in the south of the island. The sea off Phu Quoc is also home to endangered sea turtles and the dugong, a species of manatee.
In the last decade, Phu Quoc has become a major destination for tourists. In 2015, one million tourists came to the island, nine times as many people as the local population.
The number of tourists is expected to increase to five million. This has led to an explosion in the number of hotels, restaurants and other tourist infrastructure - and a dramatic increase in the amount of waste generated. There is a lack of capacity to collect and treat this steadily growing volume of waste.
To tackle directly where plastic waste threatens to enter the sea, WWF Vietnam is working as a matter of priority with those communities that are not connected to municipal waste collection and either burn or dump their household waste into the sea.
Litter, especially plastic, can be found everywhere on land, in rivers and in the sea. Plastic waste not only pollutes beaches, but also disturbs marine ecosystems such as coral reefs.
The management of the protected areas carries out a garbage collection program in the area of the coral reefs every two years, but with the constantly growing volume of garbage, this measure is not sufficient.
The cause of marine garbage input from the Mekong Delta is the lack of waste disposal capacity, i.e. landfills, incinerators and facilities for sorting and recycling garbage.
Most of the time, garbage is dumped in open piles in the countryside, sometimes illegally dumped into canals, or small piles of garbage lie along the sides of roads. To make matters worse, flooding during the rainy season can cause the dumped garbage to enter rivers and canals.
In order to cope with this situation, all stakeholders must be activated and involved in the further measures. This means representatives of public institutions, private companies and finally also private persons. The task is to develop an integrated waste management system for Phu Quoc.
To gain support from the representatives of the decision makers on the communal and political decision making level. This is for example the Peoples Committee, the responsible authorities for environment or for tourism. These institutions should provide the impetus to reduce the amount of plastic waste.
The private sector, especially the tourism, hotel and catering sectors, should be encouraged to take waste prevention and reduction measures within their areas of activity.
An information campaign will address tourists, residents and young people, among others, in order to achieve a reduction in plastic waste. An information program for schools will also be developed and implemented.
Together with the protected area management, local fishermen and tourism providers are to be persuaded to participate in annual waste collection campaigns.
The development of waste quantities and their disposal routes is to be recorded in order to verify the success of the measures.
In a second phase, starting in 2021, various methods of waste recycling will be investigated and their applicability assessed. This will involve implementing pilot programs for the treatment of smaller quantities of plastic waste and seeking partnerships with companies and potential investors.
A whole range of local institutions and partners will be involved in the project.
The past reporting year was again overshadowed by the global Covid 19 pandemic. Over the past twelve months, Vietnam has experienced repeated prolonged lockdowns. With early, targeted interventions and tough quarantine requirements, Vietnam initially had good success in containing Covid-19, but recently case and death rates have increased dramatically.
Provinces in the southern part of the country, which includes the project province, have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic.
Project activities had to be repeatedly restricted or even stopped last year and especially in the last few months.
In the two villages of Da Chong and Bai Bon, WWF initiated community-based separate waste collection and recycling several years ago. Last year, this measure prevented approximately 4.2 tons of plastic waste from entering the threatened seagrass beds. A total of 122.7 tons of household waste was collected in the two municipalities during the same period. However, due to the Corona pandemic, about 50 percent of participating households in Da Chong village lost their source of income from selling freshly caught fish and could no longer pay the monthly fees. WWF is helping out and continuing to fund community waste collection on a pro-rata basis. The planned expansion of this model to other villages could not be advanced in the reporting year.
Through cooperation with the tourism sector, the interest and willingness of numerous hotels to avoid and reduce single-use plastic packaging was maintained even during the pandemic. More than 40 hotels have now signed a corresponding voluntary commitment. Numerous lectures on waste separation and composting were held. The pilot project for community gardening and waste separation, which won the Plastic Innovation Contest, is currently in the planning phase.
In April 2021, WWF met with numerous government officials and presented the results of research on the current situation of waste generation in the city, as well as preliminary results on assessing the rate of plastic waste generation in the Duong Dong River, the largest river on the island. About 125 kg of plastic waste enters the sea through the river per day. Building on these findings, WWF has begun raising awareness of the plastic waste issue not only in local schools, but also through extracurricular activities. This includes, among other things, asking the district government to hold a regular the Environment Day for Phu Quoc.
In March, an event titled "Reduce plastic waste in schools" was held with more than 1,600 students, teachers and policy makers in attendance. Every school on Phu Quoc was represented at this event. In September 2021, a project initiated by WWF together with the district administration and a company was launched: 26 fishing boats belonging to the Khai Hoan Seafood Private Enterprise will set sail as "plastic fishermen" in the coming months. This model project goes by the name of "A fishing expedition against marine litter." The idea is that the plastic fishermen will bring marine litter collected at sea to shore and sell it there.
