Prudential and WWF Vietnam team to build zero plastic waste community

Volunteers from Prudential, WWF Vietnam, and city residents cleaning up Kim Lien Beach

The event was co-hosted by UK-backed life insurer Prudential Vietnam and World Wildlife Fund Vietnam in tandem with the Environmental Protection Agency under the Danang Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

The occasion attracted more than 800 volunteers including Prudential’s staff and nationwide agent force, WWF’s staff, local residents, and members of the Danang Youth Union.

Not only targeting “a beach with no waste”, the Rescue the Ocean event also sought to improve the awareness of local people and the community about the true cost of plastic waste.

Besides doing harm to the natural environment, plastic waste could also directly affect people’s health, which makes it an increasingly important task to call on the community to take action and reduce plastic waste, spreading the message that a minute of convenience is not worth hundreds of years of pollution or the health of millions of creatures and our own.

The event is a continuation of Prudential’s initiative for climate change adaption and environmental protection, after the release of an in-depth survey about awareness, attitude, and plastics use behaviour across Vietnam conducted by the not-for-profit organisation WWF Vietnam.

Cleaning beaches is part of the project “For a zero plastic waste community” that WWF Vietnam has been implementing in co-operation with Prudential, focusing on three main components: community media, children’s education, and business connection.

Prudential's interactive stall

Earlier, during August 5-11, the interactive stall “Say no with Plastic” and exclusive plastic-eating smart machines from Prudential were circulated through seven locations, including office buildings, outdoor entertainment venues, and supermarkets in the ocean city before heading towards Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City until the end of this month.

These events are the accelerator for the chain of activities under the theme “Say no with Plastic” that Prudential will be deploying on a macro scale.

“This campaign is one of a series of Prudential activities to bring a better living environment for the Vietnamese people,” said Clive Baker, CEO of Prudential Vietnam.“Through this campaign, I hope that awareness will be turned into action in the near future and that ‘white pollution’ will be a thing of the past instead of being an existing issue.”

“This is another strong commitment of us to deliver good and sustainable values to many more Vietnamese generations, the mission that we have been pursuing over the last 20 years for a brighter future.”

Vietnam is reported to be one of four countries dumping the largest amount of waste into the ocean. The Danang event, therefore, not only drew the involvement of local management authorities and relevant agencies to clean the beaches, preserve the local landscape, and protect sea creatures, but also sought to improve awareness of all stakeholder parties about the bad effects of plastic waste while striving to change plastics use behavior of local people.

The ocean ecosystem nowadays is being seriously damaged by the overwhelming volume of plastic waste. About eight million tonnes of plastic waste was reported to be discharged into the ocean every year, raising the cumulative plastic waste to 150 million tonnes in total.

The “Say no with Plastic” aims to not only awaken the public’s desire to save the environment but also to show more attention to personal health and our beloved.