[WEco] Environmental Survey in Hanoi, Vietnamby | 14-11-2016 14:05 |
|---|
 Last Saurday, I - the founder of WEco and an English club - organized an event in which we went to get foreign tourists involved in various activities, one of which was doing an environmental survey. We divided into smaller teams, and had 20 minutes to find foreigners around Sword Lake to help us with the survey. Luckily, given the limited time, every team member successfully fulfil this task. In total, we had 52 participants in our small survey. Here are the 10 questions we asked people.   1. Environmental Concern: I am glad to find out that everyone, except for 1 person, is concerned about environmental issues, more or less. Some even gave us useful ideas to raise public awareness about environment.  2. "Green" Destinations: Almost all people interviewed stressed the importance of the greennest of a city to their choice of travel destination. And that just adds to the urgent call for environment preservation in order to bring about the green beauty of the country if we want to build a reputational and beautiful image of the nation, not to mention how positive of a contribution it makes to the national economy when there are more tourists.  3. Air Quality in Hanoi: In terms of air quality in Hanoi - the capital of Vietnam - only 2 people rated 4 on a scale of 1 - 5, others rated lower. It, sadly, is the truth. The air pollution is quite serious here, not to mention that the location we carried out our survey has better air quality compared to other places in the city.  4. Factors in Air Pollution: Obviously, anyone would all agree to given contributors to bad air quality in Hanoi, including burning fossil fuels, emissions from industries and manufacturing activities, and household and farming chemicals. However, they laid great stress on exhausted gases from vehicles. And I have to admit that we have terrible problems with traffic jams. Everyone uses motorbikes, and there is not a limit to the amount of C02 and other gases a vehicle is allowed to emit.  5. Ways Tackling Air Pollution: People had various opinions on this question, but there is a similarity among them: they all thought we needed to deal with transportation and strict punishment. Many said we should have a ban on motorbikes, and try to switch to electric cars. However, it is not really practical in a developing country like Vietnam. 6. Issues Frequently Identified When You Walk on the street in Vietnam: Most people said it was trash, some added the unwanted smell and smoke to the list. This result just gives out the poor waste management and low public environmental awareness. It is not surprising to someone living in Hanoi like me, but somehow I feel slightly ashamed and sad. But I am doing my best to try to promote environment preservation in my lovely country. Wish me best luck!  7. Level of Public Environmental Awareness: The maximum of this level according to the outcomes is 3 of 5. Most said it was 2. 8. Raising Public Awareness: Obviously, people would more likely give compulsory education and government intervention priority over other choices. 9. The Greennest of The Capital of Vietnam: In general, as regards the green beauty of the city, most interviewers rated 3/5 or below. Again, not surprising. 10. "Would you like to visit Hanoi again?" Well, you all know the answer. Everyone is too nice to refuse when someone asks them this question directly.  (To keep track of their work, they all had to hand in videos to show they did carry out the survey properly. You can check it here (click) to see some videos, but not all of them have uploaded the videos.) ______________________________________________________ Externality: So, for the Halloween, we had a small party. And I told my students to quickly decorate the used coffee plastic cups in the way they thought fit for the celebration. I know their products were nothing new, and not even creative. But at least we did not throw away these plastic cups, and made a little bit contribution to recycling, didn't we? Here are a few pictures:    ______________________________________________________ |
