After receiving her fresh fish in a plastic bag, a buyer at Ho Chi Minh City’s Thai Binh Market asks that it be double bagged to avoid dirtying her hands.

Less than an hour later, the two plastic bags are sitting on her garbage can.

Multiply this by the southern metropolis’ several million households and you have a recipe for environmental disaster.

Early this month, the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment said that 50 tons of plastic bags were thrown away in Ho Chi Minh City every day.

If each bag weighs 5 grams, that’s 10 million bags wasted each day in a city of just over 6.65 million residents – the latest estimate of the city’s population released in mid-2007.

Only a very small portion of those bags is recycled, said the department.

Much of it makes its way to landfills, which are quickly filling up, while many people simply throw their used bags in the nearest street, gutter, canal or river.

To deal with the problem, the department proposed that the sale of plastic bags in the city incur a special tax.

The department also proposed banning free plastic bags and asked the city government to set up a steering committee to manage plastic bag use at local retailers.

Under the proposal, local authorities would encourage the production of biodegradable bags as well as the recycling of plastic bags.

The proposal also suggested that favorable loans be extended to firms that reduce industrial pollution and recycle waste.

Freedom and abundance

At an An Dong Market food stall in District 5, ten plastic bags are used nearly every five minutes. Buyers often fill up nearly four bags and then take a fifth to carry the other four.

At a nearby fish stall, all purchases are handed out in at least two plastic bags each.

Plastic bags are used similarly at small groceries, retail shops, supermarkets and shopping malls.

Most bakeries put their pastries and bread in paper bags first before putting those bags in plastic bags to make them easier to carry.

At supermarkets, vegetables are put in plastics bags to be weighed before yet another bag is added at the check out counter.

At most pharmacies, medicine is always put in plastic bags, even when the purchase is often just a couple of pre-packaged tablets.

“I miss the days as a kid when my mom would take me to the market and we would get everything wrapped in newspaper and banana leaves,” lamented a 27-year-old office worker who wished to be known only as Phuong.

While those means of carrying had their own environmental impact, at least banana leaves could be composted and newspapers easily recycled. The same cannot be said of plastic bags, which have invaded even the most remote and rural markets due to their extremely low cost.

Untouchable

Plastic bags are so cheap and abundant that most consumers throw them away after one use though they’re still as clean and useable as when they were new.

The price is so low that even those who make a living sifting through trash won’t touch them.

A Vo Van Tan Street scrap collector in District 3 named Lan – who rummages through trash to collect items that can be resold to recyclers – said she and other collectors she knew no longer took plastic bags.

“That means all bags collected by garbage trucks go to the city landfills,” she said. “I only take bags if they’re thick, beautifully decorated and still clean, for my own personal use.”

And since collectors like Lan no longer pick up littered bags on the city’s streets, the unsightly plastic strewn about the sidewalks, in the canals and even on doorsteps is becoming more common.

Garbage and plastic bags have recently filled a section of the Tan Hoa Canal between District 11 and Tan Phu District next to Dam Sen Park. Most of the blockage is made up of plastic bags. Several trash collectors nearby said they too had stopped collecting plastic bags.

Residents living on the canal banks said the waterway was cleaned often but that garbage always accumulates in just days.

The recycling non-cycle

Most of the city’s very little recycling is done by small household operations that are also shunning plastic bags due to their low profitability.

Le Thanh Hien, owner of a small recycling shop in Binh Chanh District, said he was shutting down his plastic bag operations as the recycling process cost more than he could make selling the recycled goods.

“I’ll lose every time if I recycle plastic bags,” he said.

A scrap buyer named Lanh, who makes money buying items from households and selling to recyclers, said she used to sell plastic bags to various recyclers at between VND4,000 (US$0.23) and VND5,000 ($0.29) per kilogram.

The price has dropped to VND2,000 ($0.12) recently and many of her buyers have stopped buying.

Le Van Khoa, director of the HCMC Waste Recycling Fund, said there had been no official research on the amount of used plastic bags being recycled.

But he said that until something was done soon, the millions of bags around the city and in landfills would continue building up.

“If there is no action taken to prevent the use of plastic bags, they’ll fill every corner of the city sooner than we think,” he said.

Buck doesn’t stop there

Additionally, many recyclers have been forced to move or close due to their own environmental violations.

They often emit toxic fumes and smoke into the air and neighbors constantly complain about the stench of the large quantities of plastic when the recyclers wash and dry the bags before processing them.

The Tan Thang area, which crosses over both Tan Phu and Binh Tan districts, used to be abundant with vegetables farms. But over the last few years, the site became popular with plastic bag recyclers who washed and dried their bags there before processing.

But now that the bags can’t be resold, the site has been abandoned and the plastic left to waste. The once lush gardens are now covered in thick layers of leftover bags.

The accumulation of plastic has even encouraged people to throw their other trash and garbage there and Tan Thang is now a de-facto, unregulated dump.

An example to follow ?

In a story that could prove relevant to Ho Chi Minh City authorities’ efforts to stem the problem, Mexico City legislators have just approved a bill that would put store operators in jail or slap them with nearly $75,000 fines for giving out plastic bags, according to an Associated Press report posted on the International Herald Tribune’s website Wednesday.

The measure would not include biodegradable plastic bags and businesses would have one year to adapt to the law, said the report.

The average capital city resident used some 288 plastic bags per year, said a press statement issued by the city legislature Tuesday.

The city's landfills are full and the streets littered with plastic bags, according to the report.

Tuoi Tre - March 19, 2009