Quang Ninh Government to Pilot Plastic Ban on Ha Long Bay

A pilot project will see many tourism boats stop using plastic bags, bottled water, and wet paper tissues on Ha Long Bay. 

The management board of Halong Bay, Quang Ninh province confirmed that 15 local companies providing services in Ha Long Bay will embark on a pilot program that will ban the use of plastic completely on tourism boats, speed boats, kayak, etc. This program will take place on August 1^st this year.

The owners will have to remove the use of bottled water and serve the tourists water in containers made of environmentally friendly materials. Wet paper tissues will be replaced with linen towels which will be collected and reused.

Thousands of wet paper tissues and plastic bottles are used and littered into Ha Long Bay every day. This will cause severe damage to the UNESCO natural heritage. Hence the plastic will remain for millions of years, tons of garbage are collected from Ha Long Bay daily. This will destroy the bay in no time.

The deputy head of the management board, Mr. Pham Dinh Huynh said:” To save this world’s natural wonder, we need the effort of every stakeholder”. The company owners also need to be more careful in sorting waste and consider installing their own waste treatment system on their boats. Halong bay’s trash problem has reached alarm proportions.

Volunteers collecting trash in Ha Long Bay

In the first half of 2019, nearly 600 tons (220 coastal and nearly 500 offshore) were collected in Ha Long Bay. To deal with this amount of trash, the government had to spend over $600.000 USD. Most of the trash dumped into the ocean by the tourists and residence are plastic bags, bottles, and paper tissues. Last year we were all shocked to know that volunteers had collected 740 kilograms of trash within an hour. This shows us that the rapid growth in the number of visitors and pollution had damaged the reputation of Ha Long Bay, especially in the eyes of foreigners.

Almost 70 percent of trash was Styrofoam and the rest were plastic, food wrapping, and fishing net. Mr. Trilok Narain said that beaches in Vietnam are being trashed at an alarming rate that the government should ban the use of Styrofoam and plastic.

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Hoang Nguyen

(Images source: Internet)