Plastic bags

On March 7, I wrote a small post on a company making straws out of rice flour instead of plastic. Now two chains are using banana leaves to wrap some vegetables.

Vegetables such as squash, spring onions, maize and okra wrapped in banana leaves can be seen in the stores of the supermarket chains Saigon Co.op and Lotte Mart…Le Minh Hieu, a representative of Saigon Co.op, said that many Co.opmart supermarkets, Co.op Xtra hypermarkets, Co.op Food stores and Co.op Smile convenient stores in HCM City are carrying out the practice…“We don’t charge more for vegetables wrapped in banana leaves. You might think that natural wrapping costs more, but, in fact, it doesn’t,” he said. “While we have to employ a machinery line for plastic packaging, banana leaf wrapping requires manpower,” he explained, adding that banana leaves remain fresh for one to two days.

It’s amazing to me that people are trying to move away from plastic so quickly. Of course, I recently listened to a podcast with David Wallace-Wells, who wrote The Uninhabitable Earth, and he said that it was not really a solution. But he said, and I agree, do something, but understand that what you do is of little importance. Because it is a collective action problem, we need a bigger solution than something that any individual can do.

In other environmental news, USAID launched a $183m clean-up of an Agent Orange site. It is an old airbase near HCMC that the US military used to store the chemical:

At Bien Hoa, more than 500,000 cubic metres of dioxin had contaminated the soil and sediment, making it the "largest remaining hotspot" in Vietnam, said a statement from the US development agency USAID, which kicked off a 10-year remediation effort on Saturday…The dioxin amounts in Bien Hoa are four times more than the volume cleaned up at Danang airport, a six-year $110 million effort which was completed in November.

The US is not that great dealing with its past sins. Look at the Native Americans in the US. For Vietnam, it still doesn’t admit a link between the chemical and birth defects. But Vietnam has decided to move beyond that, and the US has started doing a few things to help people. Good.

Finally, a good investment summary of Vietnam can be found here. Conclusion:

Vietnam is still one of the most favoured markets amongst frontier investors given its robust economic growth, stable macroeconomic outlook, ability to attract foreign direct investments and now an increasing consensus that the country is expected to benefit from the trade tensions between China and the U.S.

Happy Easter, belatedly, for all those that celebrate. Happy Passover for those that celebrate that.