The Hanoi Times - In Ho Chi Minh City’s crowded Thai Binh market, a middle-aged woman waited for a fish seller to wrap her purchase. The seller put the fish into a plastic bag, then wrapped the package in another plastic bag and held it out.

“Wait! I need another bag otherwise my bag will get wet,” the woman said.

The fish seller was just o­ne of many stalls the woman visited, ending up with several multi-bag packages.

And the woman was just o­ne of the thousands of housewives that shop every day at markets, supermarkets and department stores across Vietnam.

Using plastic shopping bags has become a habit that’s hard to break.

Most Vietnamese people know plastic bags are harmful to the environment but they find the bags convenient and they are unaware of any suitable substitute. After a shopping trip, the family motorbike is often laden with plastic bags, hanging from hooks and from the handlebars.

Shocking statistics

According to the HCMC Waste Recycle Fund, city residents dump 50 tons of used plastic bags a day. Most of them are not biodegradable.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment also said each Vietnamese family throws out an average of o­ne bag a day, or 365 bags a year.

Compared to other countries, Vietnam’s shopping bag dumping rate is high. In Ireland, each person uses an average 328 plastics bags a year, each Australian 250 bags and each Scottish person 153 bags a year.

HCMC Solid Waste Management Office said o­nly 35 to 40 tons of plastic bags ended up in the city’s rubbish dumps each day. The rest find their way into rivers, canals and dikes.

Scientists say it takes 500 to 1,000 years for a plastic shopping bag to break down without direct sunlight.

How to kick the habit

According to the HCMC Natural Resources and Environment Department, there should be a widespread campaign to help people kick their plastic shopping bag habit.

The mass media and websites could help educate people about the environmental damage plastic bags cause, the department said. The campaign should also target retailers through retail associations, trade departments and business associations.

The department said it had lobbied big supermarket chains, including Co-op Mart, Maximark, Citimart and Big C, to reduce the distribution of plastic bags.

A network of plastic bag-collecting outlets has been planned, the department said.

In the long run, it said, the government should consider taxing plastic bags and banning the free distribution of plastic bags to consumers.

Nguyen Van Quan, a lecturer at HCMC Ton Duc Thang University, said the problem could be solved if the government imposed a limit o­n the number of plastic bags that could be produced each year.

Replacing with new bags

Metro Cash & Carry Vietnam’s communication officer Tran Thi Thanh Thuy said since 2007 the chain has been selling reusable shopping bags, which many customers used.

“We will no longer distribute free plastic bags to buyers,” she said.

Co-op Mart supermarket chains is running a campaign to encourage employees and customers to use fewer plastic bags, with banners in stores saying “saving plastic bags means saving the environment.”

Do Minh Khoa, the director of a Maximark supermarket in HCMC, said since 2007 the store had been using a new kind of biodegradable shopping bag.

However, he said, the biodegradable bags were quite costly and many consumers had complained about the quality of the bags.

“Eco-bags”

In Hanoi, the Go Green club launched an eco-bag program, sponsored by Toyota Vietnam, earlier this year. Under the program, volunteers distribute environment-friendly bags in workplaces, exchanging o­ne eco-bag for five kilograms of office waste paper.

After three weeks, volunteers had visited nearly 30 corporate offices in Hanoi, including IBM, Panasonic, Sony Erricson and the Vietnam Institute of Science’s Institute of Chemistry.

The eco-bags, made from grass and jute cloth, can be used for shopping, working or picnicking with friends.

Go Green reported that their volunteers collected thousands of kilograms of waste and used paper during stage o­ne of the project. The paper was sold to recycling factories and the proceeds were used to make more eco-bags.

Go Green Deputy Chairman Tran Xuan Viet said for the next stage, which started late March, the campaign has gone to supermarkets.

Some 50,000 free bags have been distributed to Big C, Hapromart and 24-Hour supermarkets in Hanoi, Viet said.