Economy

Part 1: The high price of convenience!

PV Group • November 1, 2025 15:01

Every time we go to the market, we can bring home dozens of colorful plastic bags; a quick meal is accompanied by styrofoam boxes, plastic bottles, and disposable straws; online orders are also indispensable for convenient plastic packaging. That seemingly harmless “convenience” is quietly piling up into a giant “mountain of trash”, overflowing into rivers, streams, fields, seeping into meals, water sources, and even the human body.

Author: PV Group - Publication date: November 1, 2025

Every time we go to the market, we can bring home dozens of colorful plastic bags; a quick meal is accompanied by styrofoam boxes, plastic bottles, and disposable straws; online orders are also indispensable for convenient plastic packaging. That seemingly harmless “convenience” is quietly piling up into a giant “mountain of trash”, spilling into rivers, streams, fields, seeping into meals, water sources, and even the human body. Plastic waste, the high price that the environment and public health are paying for their own convenient habits.

In the morning, in the hustle and bustle of people at Coi market, Mrs. Trinh Thi Hoa in My Ha block, Vinh Loc ward, returned with her hands heavy with colorful plastic bags hooked to her motorbike, hung on both sides of the handlebars, tied behind the rear of the vehicle... A few green onions are wrapped in a small plastic bag, a bunch of vegetables in another bag, a few lemons, a few chili peppers, a few fish... each in a separate plastic bag. Then everything is neatly put in a larger plastic bag for easy carrying. Just one trip to the market, the number of plastic bags she brought back must be counted in dozens. Mrs. Hoa said: "It's very convenient, putting each item in a bag makes it easier to sort, and also helps to avoid mixing food smells. After taking out the food, the small bag is thrown away, the big bag is for trash. Every time I come back from the market, I have nearly a dozen plastic bags." That "convenience", over time, has become an inherent habit, penetrating every corner of life.

A walk around Hung Dung market in Truong Vinh ward reveals the entire “plastic world”. Mrs. Dinh Thi Thu Ha’s pork stall consumes a kilo of plastic bags every day. Whether it’s a big crowd or a small crowd, it’s almost the same. Mrs. Ha says, “hundreds of sellers, thousands of buyers” of all kinds of goods, from fresh and dried foods to clothes, shoes, fish sauce, etc., all use plastic bags.

Not only in the market, but also at milk tea shops, nutritious porridge shops, fast food shops, plastic cups, foam boxes, plastic straws are piled up on the tables, stacked after each customer. Online orders delivered to your home are no different, always accompanied by convenient plastic bags and plastic boxes.

Ms. Kieu Thi Loan in Thanh Vinh ward has a famous homemade food establishment, specializing in marinated eel, braised fish, braised meat, shredded pork floss, shredded chicken floss, etc. Every day, thousands of orders are packaged and shipped, which means thousands of cheap plastic boxes are released to the market. The fragile, breakable boxes, only one to two thousand VND each, are convenient and cheap, becoming the "cover" for each dish. The dipping sauce and broth are packaged in plastic bottles. Customers receive the goods, hurriedly open the box, pour, enjoy, then throw the box into the trash. Behind each convenient meal, plastic waste increases every day. Plastic waste follows consumers to every kitchen, then follows the trash back into the environment. A vicious cycle with no way out.

Out in the suburbs, where garbage piles up like mountains, plastic bags are blown in thick layers, stuck to fences, hanging from treetops, and scattered across fields. In ditches and rivers, plastic bottles and styrofoam boxes float, drift, and then pour into the sea. People living along the river are used to picking up duckweed along with piles of plastic garbage, even dead fish and shrimp caught in floating plastic bags. In the sea, when fishermen pull up their nets, there is often more garbage than fish.

In the morning at Lach Van (Dien Chau), the sea breeze cannot overcome the stench from the piles of garbage and water hyacinth that drift in. As a large inlet, Lach Van welcomes hundreds of boats every day, but the banks are packed with broken styrofoam boxes, bottles, plastic sandals, torn clothes, plastic bags... mixed with water hyacinth to form long streaks of garbage. When the tide rises, the waves pull the garbage out into the canal, wrapping it around the propellers, obstructing the boats. On the sea dike, garbage is tangled around the roots of mangrove trees and mangrove trees like traps. Every time the drainage sluice is opened, garbage from the Bung River flows down, flows out to the estuary, drifts to Dien Thanh beach, covering the sandbank. Visitors have to avoid each section to set foot on the sand. Mr. Bui Van Long, a resident, said: "The garbage comes back every year. The sea takes it all, then when the sea is rough, it returns."

In Hai Bac hamlet, a garbage dump is located just a few steps from the foot of the dike, which has existed for more than ten years. The garbage is piled high with all kinds of garbage: plastic bags, packaging, waste oil, medical gloves, medicine bottles, etc. The leachate flows down the slope of the land into the river, then out to sea. "It's very polluted, the smell is unbearable," Mr. Hoa, a resident of Hai Bac hamlet, complained. Not far away, on the dike of Tien Tien hamlet, garbage also overflows the surface of the dike. Despite the prohibition signs, the habit of illegal dumping still occurs secretly.

Even at fishing ports, plastic bags are everywhere. Fishermen bring hundreds of plastic bags to the sea to classify seafood, then leave them on shore when they dock. “Twenty kilos of seafood can contain up to 15 species, each species must be put in a separate bag, classified for convenience in calculating the price. Once on shore, they are weighed and put back into baskets, styrofoam boxes, and the bags are left right at the dock, so every port is full of plastic bags,” fisherman Nguyen Van Tr. explained.

Not only the coast, the mangrove forests considered as natural "armor" to protect the sea also become places to keep garbage. The mangrove forests along the river mouths, the garbage tightly woven and hung on the branches of mangrove trees, the flood season is washed up by the water, when the water recedes, it is exposed to the sun. The garbage just follows the water flow, the river mouths, the creeks to the sea; rain, storms, rough seas, garbage floats up to the beach, to the shore. From plastic bags, plastic bottles, abandoned fishing nets to tiny microplastics that are difficult to decompose, all are silently accumulating, causing the ocean to face an unprecedented danger of pollution...

The immediate convenience becomes a long-term trap. Consumers have become accustomed to it and find it hard to give up. There are food processing facility owners who call on customers to bring their own boxes when buying processed foods, or switch to paper boxes or stainless steel boxes, but the price has increased, customers do not accept it, so they go back to disposable plastic boxes. Biodegradable bags or paper boxes have not been used as a replacement because the price is many times higher, and few customers are willing to pay more. Abusing plastic bags and plastic products is no longer the story of a few individuals. And if we continue to consider it normal, tomorrow, the price to pay will be the living environment, public health and the future of future generations.

If in the past, household waste was mainly leaves, leftover food or easily decomposable items, now with the modern pace of life, the amount of waste generated is increasing and diverse, of which plastic waste accounts for a large proportion and is the most difficult to handle. The work of classification, collection, transportation and treatment is still limited and has not kept up with the rate of waste discharge. A survey by the Provincial Department of Environmental Protection shows that the largest source of plastic waste is commercial centers, followed by service businesses, hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas. Notably, the amount of plastic waste from the medical sector accounts for 13.29%, reflecting the widespread use of plastic because of its convenience, especially in serving patients and their families.

From markets, supermarkets, hospitals to daily activities, plastic is piling up into a giant "mountain of trash". According to statistics, every year Vietnam releases 1.8 million tons of plastic into the environment, of which 0.28 - 0.73 million tons flow into the sea, accounting for about 6% of the total amount of plastic waste discharged into the sea globally. However, only 27% of this is recycled or reused; the majority of the rest is either buried or burned. Meanwhile, plastic appears in all fields: agriculture has nylon covering the ground, fruit wrapping, pesticide packaging; construction has tables, chairs, plastic doors, fabric covering the construction; fishing has nets, buoys, foam boxes... More worryingly, plastic waste also arises during the recycling process, when products that cannot be reused are discarded and mixed in.

Mr. Trinh Thach Lam - Head of Plant Protection Department (Provincial Department of Cultivation and Plant Protection) said: "In agricultural production, nylon is used a lot, from field fences to prevent rats to fertilizer packaging, plastic bottles containing pesticides. These types of packaging are classified as hazardous waste, but for many years, classification and treatment have been difficult due to lack of infrastructure, high costs and limited awareness of the people."

According to scientists, the plastic production process uses many types of industrial chemical additives that disrupt the endocrine system, directly affecting human and animal health. Typically, plastic bags, when discarded and mixed into the soil, can last for hundreds of years, changing the soil structure, causing the soil to not retain water and nutrients, preventing oxygen from permeating, thereby directly affecting plant growth. The soil and water environment are also poisoned when plastic bags decompose, producing microplastic particles and heavy metals, quietly entering the human body through food and water sources.

Despite the danger, Vietnam still mainly handles plastic waste by burying and burning, accounting for 90%, while only 10% is recycled. Recycling activities are fragmented, small-scale, concentrated in craft villages, lacking management and technology, and in many places causing secondary pollution. Most recycling facilities use old machinery and outdated technology, not enough to handle the huge amount of plastic waste generated every day.

From convenient plastic bags to disposable plastic boxes, plastic waste is eroding ecosystems, poisoning the living environment and human health. Without timely and fundamental solutions, the “plastic ghost” will continue to weigh heavily on the sustainable development of future generations.

PV Group