Door to door program and Waste Recycling Day at the center of a major public education program.

In the wake of 2016’s highly successful, 8000-household door-to-door campaign in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Vietnam Recycles today announced its 2017 program that will kick off on March 18 with the second Door-to-Door program, before going into high-gear at the 10th Annual Waste Recycling Day  on April 9th.

Residents in Ho Chi Minh City’s 3, 4, Phu Nhuan and Binh Thanh Districts will be informed of the program and educated on the importance of efficient e-waste disposal, while Recycling Day attendees will again be regaled with fun and informative activities on ways in which we can all make Vietnam’s environment a little cleaner and greener this year.

With the backing of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment along with local People’s Committees in each district, the campaign is expected to directly reach over 3000 households around the city.

This will be the third time that the Vietnam Recycles teams have ‘hit-the-hems’, with diverse activities including a parade on the city’s main streets, direct approaches to households, distribution of leaflets, presentation of gifts, and conducting research into the attitudes of residents.

In a ten-week 2016 campaign that spanned both cities, the Vietnam Recycles teams collected more than 500 items which have since been recycled to the highest international standards, and gathered some interesting insights of the 8,000 residents with whom they spoke.  This research highlighted an alarming lack of knowledge of the importance of the safe recycling and disposal of electrical and electronic items among people in Vietnam, which in turn, leads to unsafe practices for disposal.

Ms. Miriam Lassernig, spokesperson for Vietnam Recycles said of the previous year’s efforts: “2016 was an exciting year for Vietnam Recycles: we on-boarded a new member producer, Microsoft Corporation, and started the Household Collection Campaign.  With this, we made tremendous in-roads in sharing our message about electronic waste recycling, while at the same time, learned just how much more needs to be done to make people aware of the importance of this matter.  We took to the streets to address this directly, in a fantastic initiative, that we are thrilled to bring back bigger and better than ever this year”.

The organization will also kick-off a “10,000 pledge campaign”, asking people to say ‘YES to the responsible disposal of electronic products’.  This asks people to visit a micro-site and pledge to recycle items appropriately – including at the 10th Annual Recycling Day held in HCMC’s Labor Culture. Visitors can also participate in a variety of fun, interesting activities related to 3T premise: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. The activities aim to communicate and create awareness among enterprises and locals towards the importance of professional take-back and recycling for electronic products.