Swedish Ambassador to Vietnam Pereric Hogberg addressed the “7 Day Challenge” campaign in Hanoi (Source: VNA)
Hanoi (VNA) – The “7 DayChallenge” campaign, an initiative from Sweden, has arrived in Vietnam.It encourages the participants to eat, move and live without harming theenvironment.
“Since I came some years ago, I met so manyyoung Vietnamese who think very much about security and safety in daily life.It’s about air safety, water safety, food safety - what does it come from? Ofcourse, traffic safety,” Pereric Hogberg, Swedish Ambassador to Vietnam toldVietnam News Agency on the launch of the campaign.
The event was organised by the United Nations,the Swedish Embassy in Vietnam and the Live & Learn Environmental EducationCentre. It has three periods, starting on April 10, April 17 or April 24 andlasts for a week. It was previously held in Kenya, Brazil, India and Indonesia.
The campaign’s hashtag #7_Ngay_Thach_Thuc or#7DayChallengeVN has drawn much interest of people who want to challengethemselves to achieve a smarter life.
Nguyen Viet Lan shared on the hashtag that hernew way of travelling to work is bus rapid transit. “I choose this because airpollution continues to cause severe health problems for people in Hanoi. Ibelieve move smart can help reduce this phenomenon.”
Bus rapid transit (BRT) - a way of travelling to protect the environment (Source: Nguyen Viet Lan, a participator of the campaign) The Green Innovation and Development Centre(GreenID) and the Vietnam Live and Learn Centre for Environment and Communityreported earlier this year that alarming pollution readings were recordedin Hanoi in 2017.
In 2017, Hanoi had 257 days when the Air QualityIndex exceeded the safe limit set by the WHO while statistics from the USEmbassy in Hanoi revealed that the atmospheric quality in the city was much lowerthan India’s New Delhi and Mumbai.
The country was reported to spend about 780million USD annually on public health costs caused by air pollution.
Lan also shared she changed her habit of usingsingle-use bags.
“This morning I brought some reusable bags withme and tried to refuse plastic bags when buying food, except for fish, as itcannot be put together with other food, Lan said. “[I] will remember to bring areusable box for fish next time.”
Using reusable bags is one way to reduce plastic pollution (Source: Nguyen Viet Lan, a participator of the campaign) The use of plastic bags remains a problem inVietnam as there is a lack of information about the importance ofenvironmentally-friendly bags. An Ocean Conservancy report in2015 found that Vietnam together with China, Indonesia, the Philippinesamd Thailand are responsible for up to 60 percent of the plastic trash flowinginto the seas.
Linh Hai Nguyen, another responding to hashtag#7_Ngay_Thach_Thuc or #7DayChallengeVN, said she will not use plastic strawsand single-use items, but re-usable shopping bags and eco-friendlyproducts.
“Such small things are things that the Earth isrequiring,” Linh shared with the online community.
Eco-friendly products contribute to reducing environmental pollution (Source: VNA) Behavior changes coming from small things byindividuals can create huge benefits, said Hogberg.
“We have ideas, we have different initiatives.But most of all, it has to come from Vietnam, it comes from someone else. Itcomes from how we constantly innovate, renovate ourselves, in a way of findingways of changing to adjust to become a more sustainable society,” said theAmbassador.
The seven-day Challenge – Eat, Move, and LiveSustainably also aimed to respond to the Earth Day 2018 (April 22) themed “EndPlastic Pollution”.
During the challenge, participants could eatvegan or choose locally-grown produce, travel by bicycles or go walking insteadof riding vehicles with fossil fuel, or seek ways to save energy and reducewaste at home.-VNA
VNA