Garbage town

There is a lot of trash everywhere I've been. The beach I went to, Can Gio, is a real mess. In HCM there is trash on the streets everywhere and on the tour bus rides I've taken small trash piles are everywhere along the roadside. And Tây Ninha where the Cao Dai temple I visited had trash on all the streets the bus drove along.

In places like HCM it is difficult to find a trash can. Every other city I recall visiting has them pretty much at every corner and often times along the block as well. In Vietnam I've had too look carefully to find trash cans. This is true even in the resort I visited. And the beach at the resort is not one I'd like to go barefoot along.

I see street cleaners are everywhere in HCM. By "street cleaner" I mean a person in an orange jump suit pushing a rolling bin and carrying a broom and dust pan. A veritable army of these people sweep the sidewalks and streets. The street gets cleaned and the cycle starts all over again once the cleaners abandon the streets. My impression of the Vietnamese approach to public sanitation, at least in HCM, is "throw it to the ground and the street cleaners will pick it up."

This works after a fashion in HCM but I don't imagine the street cleaner vs trash ration is high enough once outside the city center. Judging from the trash piles I've seen along the roads it isn't. Much of the trash is inorganic, plastic, so it will be around for a while. Plastic bags are abundant and many beverages are sold in plastic bottles.

One item of trash I haven't seen much of is glass. From my bicycle riding I've developed a keen eye for glass to avoid flats. In the US it is everywhere. Even along quiet country roads. Given the amount of beer I see being consumed from glass bottles here I expected there to be plenty of that along the roads too. I'm not seeing it though. I don't know if there are bottle deposits but I guess glass must be valuable enough a resource that it doesn't qualify as trash.