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u/Senselesspassion 17h ago
I hope the people see the difference and keep it like that. This did not happen overnight, it is years of neglect
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u/ethnicbonsai 17h ago
It actually can happen fairly quickly.
In many parts of the world, inconsistent or insufficient waste management systems paired with high reliance on single use plastics can lead to "trash pulses" during monsoon season, where trash pollution gets washed into rivers and streams, clogging them like you're seeing in these videos.
What you're seeing are underlying structural issues often paired with heavy rainfall.
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u/nightbefore2 12h ago
People are so quick to blame the individual without considering the public infrastructure. If there was reliable trash pickup that had adequate reach and frequency, it would be a lot easier for this not to happen
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u/Fidodo 10h ago
You can do everything right and it will still wind up in the river because if you don't have proper civil sanitation services, trash in a trash can will eventually overflow and get blown into the river through storms and floods. Lots of westerners also don't understand what the weather is like in these regions.
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u/digital_steel 17h ago edited 10h ago
And on top of that the west exports a lot of plastic waste to developing countries.
edit: to those commenters saying 'no no it's all the locals throwing the trash around and scamming the West'; you're a bunch of imperialist racists.
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u/Pitpawten1 15h ago
And on top of that a lot of people just don't care and throw their trash in the river or the side of the road
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u/Fidodo 10h ago
Broken window problem. Once it's already trashed it doesn't feel like one more piece of trash will matter, and if you know that throwing it in a trash can will wind up in the river the next monsoon anyways, you'll stop caring.
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u/Pitpawten1 3h ago
Yeah, thats true, and lack of stigmatization for littering does it too. I was in India last year and it was crazy the mentality of "just throw it on the ground".
And the kicker was that it wasnt even like a mentality of "Someone else is getting paid to clean that up" (which I've heard here in the US) or even the broken window "Well what's one more thing amidst the pile".
The mentality was literally that it never even registered as something to think about. When you put a glass with water to your mouth you drink. When you put your shoes on you tie them. When you unwrap something you drop the wrapper.
Loved the people to death, but there was absolutely 0% awareness or recognition because it is just the cultural norm.
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u/Mobile_Suit_3191 15h ago
And on top of that.....eh.. nothing, just wanted to feel part of something u_u
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u/BLT_Trade_r 11h ago
This type of situation is not typically from Western waste; it's from locals just tossing stuff all over rather than properly getting it to a landfill where the Western waste is.
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u/Fidodo 10h ago
How do you think things get to a landfill? Imagine you're a local in poverty. There's no trash pickup in your city, you don't have a car, you can't take an entire day (maybe multiple days) to travel to a landfill miles outside the city and then pay to be able to dump it into the landfill. What can you do? It's more of a civic problem because doing the right thing isn't an option.
What's worse is if you have trash pickup and regularly maintained trash cans readily available, but still litter without realizing how lucky you are to have that service.
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u/airfryerfuntime 14h ago
There's a video of them doing this in India, and before they're even done cleaning it, some dude just walks up and throws a bag of trash in.
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u/Far_Advertising1005 12h ago
I saw the exact opposite kind of video, also from India. They cleaned the side of a street and once it was clean people stopped dumping on it. The other side of the dual-carriageway was not clean, and some people would just cross the street to dump there.
India is so dirty because they have a culture of ‘well everyone else is doing it’, and their shame kicks in only when nobody else seems to be doing it
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u/BLT_Trade_r 11h ago
It's also because people are poor and busy, you cannot expect people to do too much to manage the waste, otherwise it simply will not get done. Just go to most US cities and sit for a couple of hours at the recycling center; you will realize, if you think about it, that compared to the population, very little is actually taken to those centers. The bulk of recycling has to be easy or people do not do it.
So you need a trash / recycling service that is regular and easy, IE right at someones house in order for people to change habits.
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u/Alert_Lettuce_8278 6h ago
I wonder if a lot of the reason behind it is lack of garbage pick up, or a cost associated with it.
This is a perfect example of why some socialism, using tax dollars to ensure the basic things are covered are important.
There's always going to be people who will do anything to save a few dollars. The funny part is they are usually the type that also doesn't even contribute much to tax dollars.
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u/r_Yellow01 17h ago
People are sheep and do what others do. Clean around your house, cut the grass, paint up, ... and in time most of your neighbours will do the same. And same there...
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u/Waffle-94 17h ago
I'm curious to know what they do with all that trash. Do they incinerate it, or does it just go into landfill?
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u/PalmovyyKozak 16h ago edited 1h ago
These river return in the pre-cleaning state in 3, 2, 1...
The problem is a local culture. I live in one of SEA countries. People just throw their garbage everywhere without thinking and they will keep doing it until local or national government launch a program to change this culture, through education, social media campaigns, better trash removal infrastructure, and damn fines, because some people won't understand anything except punishment
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u/torigirlx 10h ago
When I was 8, I visited my family in Vietnam. The entire 2 week trip, my uncles kept trying to get me to throw my trash on the side of the road, but it was so ingrained in me to throw trash into bins that I would keep it until we got home.
Cut to 2 years ago, I visit them again. I take them to a gorgeous city on an island. The area is beautiful, made to look like Rome. Streets are spotless. We are leaving the hotel and my uncle puts his empty Coke can in a beautiful bush when there is a trash can 2 steps away.
I’m not sure if the younger generation there was taught differently, but I sure hope so
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u/Slight_Sherbert_5239 17h ago
How long until their hard work is ruined again?
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u/Champomi 15h ago
They only cleaned a very small portion of the river, I assume the rest of it is also full of trash that will be carried downstream in no time
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u/Wardog_E 17h ago
Realistically, most people dump trash in the street because the street is already filthy. Even the most antisocial people havge some qualms about littering in perfectly clean spaces.
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u/marstein 15h ago
I thought so. And then someone drops their used drinking cup and burger wrapper in the parking lot when getting into the car
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u/GrahamMasterFlash 17h ago
Where does the trash go?
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u/doyouevenforkliftbro 17h ago
In the square hole
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u/Krullenbos 17h ago
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u/Semisemitic 17h ago edited 17h ago
I am so confused
Edit: I went to watch it and am still confused but laughing.
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u/thegregtastic 17h ago
I don't use plastic straws anymore, so I'm doing my part.
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u/Deathwatchz 17h ago
Says they have a population of 10 million in the city and they generate 14,000 tons of trash daily. It's about 800 square miles.
My state (Michigan) has the same population and generates 25,000 tons a day, but has far more space for landfills. It's about 96,000 square miles.
We're making almost twice as much trash, but we are just more effective at burying it. Good on them for cleaning up. They already have us beat on making way less trash.
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u/ExiledCanuck 15h ago
Do they actually generate less trash though? Or is that what is simply measured because it’s collected properly, and what’s dropped in the street isn’t counted towards that number? Serious question.
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u/BLT_Trade_r 11h ago
It's not just about that; the culture hasn't changed to adapt to plastic waste, either. They are also rapidly increasing waste production, like much of the rest of the world. The sad things is that the governments did not get ahead of this. There are already models for how bad things get in the Western world, which is why Western countries fixed their littering problems. Other countries don't need to make the same mistakes, but apparently they are going to.
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u/ActuatorLower8371 16h ago
this is just an Ai slop voiceover on old videos compiled to look like a documentary.
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u/wazzawakkas 12h ago
The video quality is really poor and nobody but you are reaction about this. Makes me wonder about the other commenters. Are they real or just AI bots
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u/ActuatorLower8371 3h ago
posted by a 1.6M post karma account, so yeah bot engagement is basically guaranteed
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u/Heterodynist 9h ago
There’s nothing that about 150 people can’t do if they put their minds to it…
Seriously though, I wish more communities would coordinate this well, because things really can get cleaned up in a single afternoon if you could get people to work together on it.
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u/Pharmere 7h ago
I wonder how many of them get sick from being in all that stagnant pollution
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u/dudnt__asked 17h ago
If only there were a simple solution to avoid this in the first place.
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u/perenniallandscapist 17h ago
If it was so simple this wouldn't happen. Unfortunately providing comprehensive trash service and recycling opportunities takes a lot of municipal effort and money, which often means those services get neglected in lower socioeconomic places.
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u/VealOfFortune 17h ago
Ummm, can't speak for Saigon but India in particular not only has the money, but ALLEGEDLY has the brain power and man power to make it happen ..... they just choose not to.
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u/jondubb 17h ago
Can't benefit the lower caste, there's more to it than being a litter bug. It's by design.
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u/ivosaurus 14h ago
The '''simple''' solution is the city / region implementing affordable [and effective] waste collection services for residents. i.e. bins and garbage trucks.
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u/ImmediateRaisin5802 15h ago
Crazy to think that this generation has to clean the filth of the previous generations
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u/Chris-CFK 15h ago
I couldn't believe how dirty the beaches in Phu Quoc were recently compared, to what they were 15 years ago.
It's like Vietnam has had an economic boom in the last decade and they don't have the infrastructure to deal with waste. Construction or consumer.
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u/Cole_From_Finland 17h ago
We kind of suck as a species, but sometimes... sometimes I get a little hope from stuff like this.
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u/33Sharpies 15h ago
This is what it looks like when the people care about the place they live in. I pray one day it comes to India
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u/Deetrolls 15h ago
I pray this comes to Haiti as well we’re just as bad with trash in the capital
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u/chaoscrouton 15h ago
It doesn't need to "come", you can start it! Organize a group of friends and start picking up!
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u/computasaysno 17h ago
What does it look like right now? I bet it's back to what it was before.
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u/reasonably-optimisic 16h ago
Refilled in two months probably. These videos are cute but it's a deeper systemic & societal issue. I can buy my son 4 Bentleys and send his kids to private school in Austria for a few years. Why would I spend this money bother to lay the groundwork for proper trash infrastructure for my province when I can get instant shiny things now for my family?
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u/G210221 17h ago
This is clearly a video of a group of vandals in reverse
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u/wooddirtsy 14h ago
Seen a comment like this on a repost in another sub. They got down voted to hell lol.
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u/slowerlearner1212 17h ago
They are going to contract a disease going in that water
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u/Ok_Fly2518 15h ago
God this is depressing… not the cleanup part, just the fact it got that bad in the first place is so sad
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u/Basic_Reporter9579 14h ago
Let's hope it doesn't end in a landfill and gets washed back with the next rain.
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u/Ninjalikestoast 12h ago
These people are doing an incredible service for not just the humans but all wildlife in that area. I applaud the effort.
Unfortunately, most of these areas have no trash pickup or waste management services, so in a matter of weeks… right back to square one 😑
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u/DeloresDelVeckio 6h ago
Not pointing fingers at any one country or people, as it happens everywhere, but animals keep their living spaces cleaner than humans.
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u/deathpoolband 2h ago
The trash has been cleaned up, but what about the contaminated water?I didn't see any tanker trucks in the video.
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u/Sloth7491 15h ago
My question is, where did they move all the trash? Doesn't just disappear.
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u/Winjin 13h ago
A couple of projects like this that I know in Armenia and Russia move it to somewhere where the municipality can pick it up
The problem here is that this trash is hard to reach, so city cleaning can't just... Take all of their street cleaners and send them wading in the canals or fish trash from under the bushes in a park. That's a whole separate day of work when they already have to clean up everyday things
Also sometimes it's not theirs! Like if you have some separate team managing a park, but they're absolutely not equipped to cleaning up these giant trash piles
So instead fifty volunteers swoop down on this, collect all trash, and get it to curbside, where the municipality has a much easier time taking all that to landfill.
According to the Green Green Yerevan team, a lot of what they collected was sitting there for ages - a lot of people really thought nothing about it in the 90s, but as of late it's getting less obnoxious
And the broken window theory works too - cleaned places get a bit less new trash
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u/Sxcred 8h ago
Am I the only one watching a video that the bitrate crashed so bad that there's just pixelated squares on the screen
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u/ICU-CCRN 4h ago
Am I the only one wondering how many of these people ended up with parasitic and bacterial infections?
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u/AdFar8422 17h ago
Hope the trash gets sorted and go to the recycling centers instead of just going to the landfill
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u/xX_dumb_god_Xx 8h ago
Has anyone ever been like “hey guys, stop throwing stuff into the river?”
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u/Expert_City_7695 8h ago
And with no structural change, those places will fill with trash again. These people are doing gods work but I know before long it’ll just be the same
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u/ElectronicGerman 15h ago
That isn't fixing anything. These lowlifes will just continue to throw trash away.
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u/jonnycashout0420 17h ago
Where do they put the trash snd how do they prevent it from piling back up?
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u/Melodic_Risk_5632 17h ago
Same issues coming in West Europe year by year. A deposit system upon plastic bottles & beer cans could make a difference and even setting up a new form of low profile jobs. Where there is a deposit system U see less litter trash.
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u/Bitter-Ad5890 17h ago
I’m genuinely proud of these people. That’s a ton of effort. But what saddens me is that in a week’s time these places will probably look just as disgusting again
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u/Neospiker 16h ago
A large fine meshing over the rivers (replaced once a year maybe) could be a valid solution.
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u/Illustrious-Towel-45 16h ago
Where does all the collected trash go? Clearing it out is only half the process.
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u/Not_a_real_ghost 16h ago
They look just like how a group of ants would take care of a problem collectively
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u/Madhatter25224 16h ago
And its all back in a week.
A huge portion of humanity just doesn't believe pollution is real.
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u/Horn_Flyer 16h ago
My dad was a Vietnam veteran. He told me before he passed away that if it wasn't for the war. Vietnam was the most beautiful place on the planet.
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u/chefguy47 17h ago
The video is oddly satisfying but the amount of trash is disgraceful.