Garbage to garden: Saigon woman upcycles scraps into garden ornaments
Friday, June 05, 2020, 11:57 GMT+7
A woman in Ho Chi Minh City is embodying the age-old proverb “one man’s trash is another man’s (or woman’s) treasure” with her creative methods of reusing garbage-bound goods as garden decorations.
Pham Thi Thanh Thuy, 39, a resident of Thu Duc District, has day by day furnished her 160-square-meter garden by scrap discarded by their family.
The first upcycled piece added to her garden was a chair she fashioned from a 50-year-old cradle that had been passed down in her family through three generations.
She was so pleased with her work that she made it her mission to continue upcycling landfill-bound garbage.
One of her prized pieces is a small pond fashioned from an old bathtub she found on the street.
Thuy doesn’t mind collecting things people throw away at landfills, expressing her environmental concern over non-compostable garbage.
Now, she looks for potential in every piece of trash she passes on the streets.
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| Pham Thi Thanh Thuy’s garden in Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam is decorated with discarded goods she’s recovered from trash heaps and landfills. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre |
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| An upcycled broken clay pot in Thuy’s garden in Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre |
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| An old wooden cutting board is upcycled into an ornament in Thuy’s garden in Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre |
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| A discarded tire is given into a second life as a swing in Thuy’s garden in Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre |
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| Thuy is growing a wall of greenery in old glass bottles she plucked from the street near her home in Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre |
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| Something breaks in Thuy’s house, she doesn’t throw it away. Instead, she finds a way to fix it and turn it into a garden ornament. This old pot is a perfect example. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre |
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| Tuan Khanh (right), Thuy’s 15-year-old son, helps his mother transform a broken bird cage into a new ornament for their garden in Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre |
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| Pham Thi Thanh Thuy also grows vegetables in her garden in Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre |
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