Vietnamese youth in Hanoi holding candles during a ceremony celebrating Earth Hour in March this year.

Vietnam’s youth embrace the green movement with enthusiasm and creativity.

Out of curiosity, she signed up for Hanoi-3R Club, a volunteer organization sponsored by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). 3R stands for reduce, reuse and recycle.

The club works to promote recycling in the city and the community as part of JICA’s 3RHN project, which aims to help Hanoi reduce its quantity of buried waste by 30 percent by 2015 and 70 percent by 2020.

“At the time, I didn’t really know much about the project or what it meant to recycle,” Ngoc said. “After joining the club, I learned that sorting out trash was something feasible we could do to protect the environment and make our living area cleaner.”

Since this March, Ngoc has been serving as chair of Hanoi-3R Club, which is among the most active “green” volunteer organizations in Hanoi, boasting about 200 members. Most members are students from secondary school to the university level.

There are about dozens of other similar environmental clubs in the area.

In recent years, a growing number of Vietnamese youth have been engaged in an unprecedented amount of green projects and initiatives, from participating in environmental poster design contests to learning how to turn old banners and canvas sheets into eco-bags.

In March, Earth Hour was a big hit among youth in Vietnam’s large cities.

The “green” movement that is currently being embraced by Vietnam’s young people is a sign that the new generation is just as creative as their foreign counterparts when it comes to figuring out ways to save energy and protect the environment. In essence, it shows that young Vietnamese care about problems facing the world such as climate change.

How it’s done

As the program coordinator for Action for the City, a local NGO working to raise the quality of living in Hanoi, Tran Thi Hai knows what it takes to get young people involved in green activities.

“The key point is how you structure and present your programs,” Hai said. “For young people, you can’t get them interested by putting everyone in a room and lecturing about environmental protection.”

Among Action for the City’s regular programs is the green transportation week, which encourages residents to take public transportation or bicycles to work or school.

Last year, the week targeted students in universities and colleges. This year, the organization reached out to local office workers, especially the young.

“We want to spread the message that you can make a difference in reducing emissions by making a simple choice,” Hai said.

Hai said most young people want to contribute their part, no matter how small, once they learn about programs that can improve their local communities.

Last year, Action for the City worked with students at several local universities to honor street vendors who meet cooking safety standards. The participants voted for the cleanest vendors online and held community ceremonies to recognize the winners.

Sharing the road

When Nguyen Quang Hung first proposed the idea of chungduong.com on several online forums, some people thought he was crazy.

“Chung duong,” which means “sharing the road,” aims to encourage people to carpool or “motorbike-pool” if they travel on the same route.

Though the idea of carpool is quite popular in Europe and the US, it’s still fairly new in Vietnam.

“Some people asked me why they should bother picking up strangers? But it’s something we can do to reduce the number of vehicles on the road and protect the environment.”

Hung finally launched chungduong.com in February to serve as an online forum on which participants can post their request, travel routes and connect with each other. The forum currently has 1,000 members.

Hung said the forum had also motivated many members to start making green choices in every aspect of their lives. At the airport, many have been asking strangers to share their taxi as a way to cut down on gas emissions.

Doing their part

For Ngoc, now a third-year student at Thang Long University, her most memorable experience with Hanoi-3R Club was when she joined a group that traveled through the wards in Hanoi to show people how to sort trash and recycle.

Every year, Hanoi 3R holds a regular “Mottainai Fair” inspired by the Japanese events in which people gather to exchange used items. This past year Mottainai Hanoi attracted thousands who brought recycled and reused items to trade for vouchers, which could later be traded for items from booths at the fair.

Vu Thi Tu Anh, another member of Hanoi-3R Club and a fourth-year student at Hanoi University of Technology, said she loves visiting local elementary schools and teaching younger kids about recycling.

She encourages young people to get involved with practical events and activities that directly make a difference in their own neighborhood. She said designing posters wasn’t enough.

“You’ve got to think about what can really help your community.”

Reported by Huong Le