Every Sunday morning, a large number of youths in Da Nang enthusiastically join a voluntary clean-up campaign on the Son Tra Peninsula, which is considered to be a precious natural gift and a ‘green lung’ for the city, in a bid to make this venue cleaner and more beautiful.

Foreigner visitors collecting litter along a road leading to the Son Tra Peninsula

Spending nearly 2 hours picking up litter along a road leading to the peninsula, 11th grader Dang Anh Tuan from the Phan Chau Trinh Senior High School eagerly said he has participated in this meaningful campaign for one year. 

Apart from cleaning up the Son Tra Peninsula, Tuan and other young participants have become actively engaged in collecting garbage along the tourist-packed beaches of My Khe, Man Thai and Nguyen Tat Thanh.

These youths meticulously picked up every piece of litter, and put it into large sacks which are collected later by garbage trucks. In particular, the picked-up trash was then separated into organic and inorganic types.

With his sentimental attachment to the peninsula, Mr Tran Huu Vy, the Director of the GreenViet Biodiversity Conservation Centre, a local non-governmental organisation, has made his great efforts in organising numerous meaningful publicity activities in a bid to raise public awareness about the multi-biological values of the peninsula’s nature reserve.

In particular, Mr Vy and his school-aged daughter, always join in the GreenViet-launched littering collecting campaign thorough which he want to make his child behave environment-consciously by doing the smallest deeds.

Mr Vy said he doesn’t mind the hard, dirty toil at all, but he is really saddened by the fact that the precious nature is being damaged gradually by litter thrown by mindless people.

Interestingly, this litter collecting campaign also sees the active involvement of many foreigners arriving in the city.

29-year-old Lisa and her friend Joy, both from Germany, are typical examples. Braving the scorching heat, they enthusiastically collected litter on their way to the peninsula for the travel purpose. Besides their hometown, these German travellers have also participated voluntarily in numerous clean-up campaigns in many countries they have visited.

Many photos of such highly practical events are usually uploaded to social media networks in an attempt to raise public awareness of the environmental protection. 

Similarly, another foreigner, Matti Maceratesi from Italy, remarked joining efforts with locals to clean up the environment is also an ideal way to show his special love for the foreign land he visits.

Ms Le Thi Trang, the GreenViet’s Deputy Director, said her agency has launched numerous clean up campaigns in a bid to raise public awareness about the protection of the peninsula’s multi-biological values.

Many publicity activities have helped to remind people of how detrimental trash can be to the peninsula’s ecosystem, especially the habitats for red-shanked douc langurs and other types of endangered animals living there. 

Ms Trang noted, alongside adversely affecting various species of flora and fauna on the peninsula, garbage also poses the pollution threat to a total of 20 springs from which water for daily use by local residents is sourced.