Amid the environmental pollution becoming more and more seriously threatening the living environment, students and pupils across Da Nang have together said no to plastic waste through their highly practical activities, thereby not only helping to preserve a healthy living environment but also spreading the meaningful message of environmental protection in the community.

The swapping plastic bottles for glass ones at the University of Economics

At the beginning of April 2019, the Da Nang University of Economics has organised the second edition of the “Flight 71” project under which students swap their plastic bottles for glass ones in order to minimise the discharge of an amount of plastic waste into the environment.

Tran Thi Le Quynh, a third-year student from the University, who is the manager of the “Flight 71” project, said, in recent years, the problem of environmental pollution has drawn growing attention from general public.

It is no denying that plastic products bring convenience, but also produce a huge disastrous thing called ‘white pollution’, which has become a burning issue in today’s world.

In just one year, as much as 300 million tonnes of plastic in total is produced. Over 12 million tons of plastic waste ends up in the ocean each year. However, plastic trash can take up to 1000 years to decompose in landfills.

This fact has inspired Quynh’s team to make joint efforts to prevent any actions that destroy the environment.

Accordingly, in the middle of March, the activities of swapping plastic bottles for glass ones were performed by the university’s students within 2 weeks.

A total of more than 100 glass bottles were exchanged for more than 10kg of plastic ones. Thanks to this, students now use beautifully-designed glass bottles of water hold in beautiful cloth bags, instead of plastic ones.

Quynh said the most encouraging sign is that her project has received high praise and much attention from her coursemates and those from other territory establishments.

Over the past 2 years, a small board with words encouraging pupils not to bring any plastic bags and meal styrofoam boxes with them to school has placed in front of the entrance gate of the Ly Tu Trong Junior High School located in Son Tra District.

Mr Nguyen Tran Tan Quoc, the Vice Rector of the school, said its teachers have taken initiative to raise their pupils’ awareness of plastic waste’s harmful effects into such related subjects as biology and chemistry and citizenship education.

Also, the school leaders has also required the canteen not to use plastic materials including plastic bags and cups, and styrofoam food trays.

In parallel with the publicity activities mentioned above, the school also organised an invention competition for its pupils to create useful items from recycled materials.

Besides, appeals have made for the pupils to participate in such extracurricular activities as clean-ups at relic sites and tours to explore the beauty of red-shanked douc langurs living on the Son Tra Peninsula.