VietNamNet Bridge – Images of two foreigners picking up garbage on a beach in northern Vietnam have gone viral on Facebook since July 13. They have attracted thousands of comments and shares.

The photo show two women in swimsuits on Cat Ba Beach in Haiphong City with one getting down on her knees to collect trash and the other wading in the water to collect floating garbage.

Most people express appreciation of the two women’s exemplary deeds, saying they feel ashamed of Vietnamese people’s poor awareness on environmental protection, especially at tourist destinations.

“Really disappointed!”, a person with nickname Vo Dang Minh commented. “I live in Nha Trang City and littering at the beach is not uncommon. Once, I saw people littering trash all over the beach after a party so I asked them to clean up the place but some ignored the request while others said there would be people taking care of that.”

The photos show two foreign women picking up garbage at Cat Ba Beach in Haiphong City – Photos: Pham Ngoc Long

A person identified as Dungnd suggested that such photos should be made into large posters and hung at tourist destinations and beaches to raise public awareness while a reader with nickname Hai Dinh proposed authorities put such photos at schools, including kindergartens and colleges, to educate the young generations.

The author of the two photos, Pham Ngoc Long, a professional photographer who lives and works in Quang Ninh Province’s Halong City, told the local news site VnExpress that he took the photos of the two foreign women while taking wedding photos in the area for his customers.

“There were quite a lot of people at the beach at that time but only two of them picked up trash,” Long told, adding he respected what the two women did and therefore, he wanted to capture that moment.

The younger woman told Long she comes from Spain. The two women had spent an hour doing this voluntary work.

“I felt really ashamed. Most tourists at the beach are locals, so I guess the trash was left behind by Vietnamese people, not foreigners,” he told Thanh Nien newspaper.

Surprisingly, this is not the first time foreigners have collected trash voluntarily. In recent years, Vietnamese people have heard stories about foreigners volunteering to clean up the environment.

Edward William Lippett, an American man, usually sweeps the streets in his neighborhood in Thanh Loc Ward in District 12, HCMC every morning. A Canadian man named Pierrot wanted to open a coffee shop in Nha Trang City, so he spent time collecting trash along the beach to keep it clean first, as reported by Tuoi Tre.

With rapid population growth, the volume of garbage is increasing swiftly. However, what photographer Long posted on Facebook can teach people how to behave properly in public places: never leave garbage behind.    

SGT