New Educational Resources on Waste in Vietnamese

June 2005. PanNature has produced an educational package on waste and litering for the DANIDA-funded Viet Tri Industrial and Urban Development Project. This educational package includes a poster and a waste activity guide for school teachers in Viet Tri City. The poster features household waste processing with a friendly message “Clean houses – beautiful streets: It’s simple!”.

The waste activity guide includes games and interactive activities that can be integrated into teachers’ lesson plans at schools or used in outdoor programs in order to raise awareness of school students and children on waste problems and solutions.

Waste management is becoming one of the main environmental issues as Vietnam is getting its economy grows at a rapid rate. According to the “Vietnam Environment Monitor Report 2004” published by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MoNRE), the World Bank, and the Waste-Econ Project, each year Vietnam produces over 15 million tons of waste, of which 80 percent is from municipal sources. Vietnam’s urban areas contain only 24 percent of the population of the country, but produce about 50 percent of the country’s municipal waste. With the rapid growth of the economy and increase in urban population, volume of waste generation is expected to be one of major environmental challenges for the country in the near future.

This educational package aims at providing teachers with tools to help students more aware of waste issue as well as action they can take to reduce the amount of waste in daily life.