Saigon Co.op, Vietnam’s leading distribution chain operator, will offer free plastic shopping baskets under a program called “Co.opMart for green environment” to its members and VIP card holders and to customers with purchases over VND500,000 from July 4 to 12.
Saigon Co.op said it would spend VND2.5 billion to reduce the use of non-biodegradable plastic bags.
Metro Cash & Carry began offering durable shopping baskets to replace non-biodegradable plastic bags in September 2007. Today, these bags sell for VND6,000 each.
Big C started offering similar baskets instead of plastic bags in August 2007, said Duong Thi Quynh Trang, head of Big C’s external affairs department.
HCMC environmentalists have been winning their plastic bag crusade at market places, supermarkets and shopping centers.
The Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations will distribute eco-friendly shopping baskets made from grass and jute cloth free of cost to 10,000 households in Hanoi through five major supermarkets, its Support Center for Climate Change announced last week.
The center’s goal is to reduce plastic bag consumption from the current millions per day to just one million per day by 2012. According to the HCMC Waste Recycle Fund, city residents dump 50 tons of used plastic bags daily.
According to the HCMC Natural Resources and Environment Department, there should be a comprehensive campaign to help people kick their plastic bag habit. The department said it had lobbied Co.opMart, Maximark, Citimart and Big C to reduce the distribution of plastic bags and that a network of plastic bag-collecting outlets had been planned.
The Government should tax plastic bags and ban free distribution, said the department.
Experts said that the problem could be diminished if the Government limited the number of plastic bags that could be produced each year.