Tourism joins hands to protect the environment

The program was attended by nearly 100 members representing northern travel businesses, the Forum of Small and Medium Tourism Enterprises (VTF), and the Vietnam Community Tourism Association (VCTC). The members marched and promoted the program's purpose at three destinations: Viet Tri city, Hoa Binh city, and Moc Chau town. At these destinations, the group posted posters at hotels and restaurants that met the standards of "green, clean, beautiful, and environmentally friendly", combined with garbage collection and environmental cleaning.

Vietnam's tourism is growing, but environmental issues in Vietnam are also very painful. In 2018, Vietnam's tourism industry served more than 80 million domestic visitors and 15 million foreign visitors. For tour guests, travel agencies usually give out 1 to 2 bottles of water per day. Thus, hundreds of millions of plastic bottles need to be processed. Service businesses also release a lot of plastic waste such as straws and plastic bags into the environment in large quantities, causing serious impacts on the environment.

Mr. Phung Quang Thang, representative of the Vietnam Tourism Association, admitted that currently many small businesses are still putting profit as their top priority, forgetting their responsibility to the environment and tourism products: "More than 3,000km of Vietnam's coastline and a series of tourist areas are in a state of severe pollution, causing the attractiveness of these destinations to gradually decrease in the eyes of tourists. This directly affects the tourism industry because all travel agencies depend on these destinations for their livelihood."

According to statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), each year, Vietnam has no less than 1.8 million tons of untreated plastic waste, accounting for nearly 6% of the world's plastic waste. If we only count the amount of plastic waste dumped into the ocean, Vietnam ranks 4th in the world. On the global tourism and travel competitiveness ranking published by the World Economic Forum (WEF), Vietnam's environmental protection criteria are a weak point, ranking only 129/136 countries in terms of environmental sustainability.

The above mentioned practical community activities need to be expanded and spread further to improve the current "hot" environmental situation in Vietnam.

The Phong