Vietnam is one of the most polluted countries in the world. In very few ways do they even appear to be trying to prevent this from happening and they don't seem terribly concerned about it. They do pretend to care in certain tourist areas such as the one that I live in but what many people don't understand is that if you go just a little ways out of these areas the country is very different and very dirty.
They comb the beach here with a machine every morning to remove all the garbage that comes in during the night to create the impression that this body of water isn't completely inundated with trash but that is what the situation really is.
In the tourist walking street areas they have continued to place these recycling bins all over the place but basically no one other than tourists use them. Also, if you leave the tourist area and simply go to the other side of the river in the same city, these things don't exist anywhere else.
You can see that they care so little about these things that they don't even bother to clear the brush from around it. There are dozens of these things located throughout the tourist areas near the beach and while this one appears as though it is at least emptied, I have at one point in time seen one of them being emptied late at night by the regular garbage truck and this suggests to me that they simply put all the recyclables in with the regular garbage with little to no concern about even attempting to recycle them. If you ask me we would be better off if these things didn't exist because since they are locked the people who wander around to the various regular trash cans to sort through it and collect recyclables to exchange for money, can't even get to the cans and plastic bottles. It's actually accomplishing the opposite of what it is giving the impression that it is there to do.
It's all quite frustrating but I try to not let it get to me
Nearby this same recycling bin I noticed some street art that is not great, but at least it looks like the person put a little bit of time into at least trying to make it look decent.
This construction site has been under construction for years. They started on it pre-Covid, then when the lockdowns kicked in the team apparently walked away and it has remained in a semi-completed state ever since. I don't think that this piece is particularly good but I am featuring it because of the fact that it was done on temporary fencing and therefore doesn't harm anyone's property. I presume this corrugated steel, if that is actually what this stuff is called, gets used over and over again until it can't be used anymore for exactly the same thing somewhere else. It would be interesting to see if this spray work ends up at 3 different work sites in the future.
Once they can't use it anymore I would imagine they just throw it in the ocean along with the rest of the garbage :)
With the rapid expansion of the beachside area where I live, I can only hope that at some point in the future that they start to have some sort of notion to actually do something that really does benefit the environment. Sadly, I don't think that will ever be the case and people will just continue to keep their property clean and not really ever give a rip about anyone else's.