Vietnam begins a cleanup campaign to end the tons of garbage that flood Halong Bay

Standing in his boat, squinting into the rising sun, Vu Thi Thinh picks up a block of Styrofoam floating on the calm waters of Vietnam's famous Ha Long Bay.

It's not yet nine in the morning, but she's already collected a mountain of wrappers, plastic bottles, and beer cans.

They are the most visible trace of the human impact that has degraded this Unesco World Heritage site, famous for its turquoise waters with calcareous islets that rise like towers everywhere.

“I'm tired because I pick up garbage all day in the bay without much rest. I have to make five to seven trips a day to pick up everything,” complains Thinh, 50, who has been a garbage collector for nearly a decade.

Since the beginning of March, a total of 10,000 cubic meters of garbage has been collected from the water, enough to fill four Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to the Ha Long Bay administrative board.

The litter problem has been particularly acute in the past two months, when a plan to replace polystyrene buoys in fisheries with more sustainable alternatives backfired as fishermen dumped excess buoys into the sea.

Do Tien Thanh, an environmentalist with the Halong Bay Administration Department, has said the buoys were a short-term problem, but admits that “Halong Bay is under pressure.”

human waste

More than 7 million people visited the spectacular limestone formations of Halong Bay, on the northeastern coast of Vietnam, in 2022.

Officials expect the number to rise to 8.5 million this year.

But the popularity of the site and the rapid expansion of Halong City, which now has luxury hotels and thousands of new houses, have seriously damaged its ecosystem.

Environmentalists estimate that there were some 234 types of corals in the bay. Now there are about half.

There have been signs of recovery, with coral cover slowly increasing, while dolphins began to return in small numbers thanks to a ban on fishing in parts of the site, which allowed their food sources to increase.

However, “residential waste from those areas, if not properly treated, will greatly impact the ecological system, which includes coral reefs,” Thanh said.

Single-use plastic is banned on tourist boats and the bay's management board says plastic use on boats has been cut by 90%, although land-based rubbish still litters parts of the beach.

The plastic crisis

Pham Van Tu, a local guide, says that visitors complain a lot: “They read that Halong Bay is beautiful, but when they see the floating garbage, they don't want to swim or kayak.”

Rapid economic growth and changing lifestyles in Vietnam have led to a “plastic pollution crisis”, explains the World Bank.

In Vietnam, according to a 2022 report, up to 3.1 million tons of garbage is generated each year, of which at least 10% seeps into waterways.. This figure, warns the World Bank, could double by 2030.