Ha Long Bay’s Breathtaking Beauty Threatened by Mounting Plastic Waste Crisis in Vietnam

Ha Long Bay is one of Vietnam’s most stunning natural wonders, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that attracts millions of visitors every year. But the bay, famous for its emerald waters and towering limestone islands, is facing a serious threat from plastic pollution.

Every day, Vu Thi Thinh and her team of trash pickers collect tons of plastic waste from the bay, including styrofoam buoys, plastic bottles and beer cans. They work from dawn to dusk, making several trips on their small wooden boats to clear the rubbish.

“I feel very tired because I collect trash on the bay all day without much rest,” said Thinh, 50, who has been doing this job for almost 10 years.

“I have to make five to seven trips on the boat every day to collect it all.”

Plastic waste overwhelms Ha Long Bay
The trash problem has worsened in the past two months, as a project to replace styrofoam buoys at fish farms with eco-friendly alternatives failed and fishermen dumped their old polystyrene into the sea.

According to the Ha Long Bay management board, 10,000 cubic metres of rubbish – enough to fill four Olympic swimming pools – have been collected from the water since March.

The board ordered 20 barges, eight boats and dozens of people to launch a clean-up campaign, state media reported.

Do Tien Thanh, a conservationist at the Ha Long Bay Management Department, said the buoys were a temporary issue but admitted: “Ha Long Bay… is under pressure”.

Ha Long Bay suffers from human impacts
More than seven million tourists visited Ha Long Bay, on Vietnam’s northeastern coast, in 2022.

The authorities hope to increase that number to eight and a half million this year.

But the bay’s popularity, and the rapid development of Ha Long City – which now boasts a cable car, an amusement park, luxury hotels and thousands of new homes – have taken a toll on its ecosystem.

Conservationists estimate that the bay used to have around 234 types of coral. Now the number is around half.

There have been some signs of recovery in the past decade, with coral coverage slowly increasing again and dolphins — which disappeared from the bay a decade ago — returning in small numbers, as a ban on fishing in the core parts of the heritage site expanded their food source.

But the waste, both plastic and human, is still a huge concern.

“There are so many big residential areas near Ha Long Bay,” said conservationist Thanh.

“The domestic waste from these areas, if not dealt with properly, greatly impacts the ecological system, which includes the coral reefs.

“Ha Long City can now handle just over 40 percent of its wastewater.”

Single-use plastic is now banned on tourist boats, and the Ha Long Bay management board says general plastic use on board is down 90 percent from its peak.

But trash generated onshore still lines parts of the beach, with a team of rubbish collectors not able to block the eyesore from tourists.
Tourists complain about trash in Ha Long Bay

Pham Van Tu, a local resident and freelance tour guide, said he had received a lot of complaints from visitors.

“They read in the media that Ha Long Bay is beautiful, but when they saw a lot of floating trash, they didn’t want to swim or go canoeing and they hesitated to tell their friends and family to visit,” he said.

Vietnam is one of the world’s top five plastic polluters of the oceans, according to the World Bank.

A report in 2022 estimated that 3.1 million tonnes of plastic waste are generated every year in Vietnam, with at least 10 per cent leaking into the waterways.

The volume of leakage could more than double by 2030, the World Bank warns.

Larissa Helfer, 21, who travelled to Vietnam from her home in Germany, said Ha Long Bay was beautiful but the trash problem would be one of her strongest memories of the trip.

“Normally you (might say) ‘Look at the view! Look at the fishing villages!” she told AFP.

But here “you have to talk about the trash, (you say) ‘oh god… look at the plastic bottles and things in the sea.’ And it makes you sad.”

Thinh, the trash collector, grew up in Ha Long and remembers a very different bay.

“It didn’t look so terrible,” she said.

“Of course, a lot of work makes me tired and irritated,” she admitted. “But we must do our work.”