Almost a hundred people joined hands to clean up the trash-covered Sa Huynh lagoon in Quang Ngai Province, central Vietnam, with over 400 metric tons of waste removed over the course of four days, a local official confirmed on Tuesday.

Between August 16 and 19, volunteers, local residents, and workers of Quang Ngai Urban Environment JSC jointly collected the given volume of waste, which blanketed parts of the lagoon and made it look like a floating garbage dump, said Gia Tan Tau, vice-chairman of the administration in Pho Thanh Ward, Duc Pho Town, where the saline lagoon is located.

With their joint efforts, garbage hotspots in the lagoon area such as the entrance and the exit of the Thanh Duc Bridge, as well as a dyke alongside salt fields were cleared of trash.

Some local fish farming households in the lagoon area said that never before had the body of water been so clean.

After big piles of trash were removed, local fishermen quickly collected floating trash in the lagoon, according to these households.

“The locals really appreciate those who have jointly cleared the lagoon of trash, which had remained in the lagoon for many years," said Huynh Thi Thuong, a local oyster farmer.

“Local inhabitants also throw trash in the right places."

Despite the locals’ increasing awareness about environmental protection, the Pho Thanh administration still voiced its concern over a possible recurrence of the lagoon pollution due to the dense population of 26,000 in the small ward.

The entire ward discharges an estimated 10 metric tons of waste per day, but drastic measures to deal with this large volume of trash are unavailable.

The town is seeking a temporary location to incinerate the trash, the local official said.

Authorities also called on local people to jointly take measures to protect the environment, including signing pledges not to dump waste into waterways, Tau elaborated.

Waste management has remained a big headache in Pho Thanh for years.

Piles of garbage have been seen scattered around the area since 2018, as local people prevented a solid waste treatment plant called MD from operating in the ward.

This plant was later found to have violated many regulations in terms of distance and zoning issues, resulting in several local officials being disciplined.

Quang Ngai officials repeatedly held talks with local residents to resume the operations of the plant to treat waste discharged in the ward, but the latter maintained their strong opposition to the plant.

Consequently, many parts of the ward became covered in trash, including a huge volume blanketing the Sa Huynh lagoon.

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