In the morning of July 15, 2018, when the tourists and local residents are trying to “bake to sleep” to enjoy the cold weather of the foggy Dalat, our members went out, implementing the campaign “NO Single Use Plastics (NO SUP)” around Tuyen Lam Lake – Da Lat city.
Tuyen Lam Lake, located near Phung Hoang Mountain, welcomes us from a distance with a beautiful bends around the shore, with the romantic green of the pine forest by the lake. And yet, the closer we get, the more impressive thing to us is not the landscape but the garbage. Not because we went out to collect garbage, so we only see garbage, but they are really everywhere around the lake. Garbage on the roads, on the sidewalks, on the stairs, on the beds, bathtubs of flowers, in the wild lands where the flowers are blooming. There are a lot of wastes, and most of them are plastic wastes…
Plastic is one of the most useful materials that people have invented with cheap, durable and convenient features. Today, people are heavily dependent on plastics, and humans themselves are suffering the consequences of their own when plastic wastes are pervasive, threatening human habitation as well as organisms on the earth.
We started the campaign at the beginning of the rain. The rain is like trying our minds, like our determination with the cold winds of the Liangbiang Plateau. But we are not worried about the weather but we are sad because the scenery of the lake has been contaminated by garbage, especially plastic wastes. The more garbage the more determination! The Company’s leaders and the rest do not mind the slopes, the cavities, the jams that tourists or locals residents have thrown away or put in. People quickly radiated away along the lake, picked up, held the bags, and searched for the hardest places to reach. The trash bags were soon filled, forced to change by the new ones. We have just collected garbage and thought about the images we saw in the press, on the internet or on social networks. Certainly, rivers and beaches in many locations of the world were without traces of garbage, plastic wastes. At first, they were very beautiful, very poetic. But then people come along with their gadgets and dispose of plastic wastes that can only be decomposed thousands of years later. Soon, these beautiful scenes were filled with garbage, people had to live with garbage. We are also worried that one day Tuyen Lam Lake or landscapes in Da Lat, Phu Quoc, Nha Trang, Sapa or somewhere in our country will became the victims of our own.
Nearing noon, we were forced to “withdraw” when no more bags. We do not want the environment to receive more plastic wastes when the Company prepares garbage bags and gloves that can be easily decomposed under normal conditions. Surprisingly, before we boarded the car, we were greeted by local babies on the road and supported by the rising “Number One” hand. The story of plastic wastes continues discussed in the car between the company leaders and members.
We understand that it is difficult to change the mindset of many as there are many people who, for their own convenience, deliberately forget about the harmful effects of plastic wastes, especially one-time plastic wastes. But we believe we will do it. Starting from thinking, realizing with the actions, so that it spread in the family, in the company, to the people around. We are determined to carry out our plans, in the beginning, to work with schools around the company to launch follow-up campaigns, from which many children say no to plastic items – NO SUP. We will be the bait of fire, the small charcoal to light the fire in the community, together to protect our own beloved green house.
