HCM City (VNS/VNA) - The attention businesses are paying to strategies andmeasures to protect the environment is a good augury for the sustainabledevelopment of the economy.

Thesehave come into focus recently after the public and retailers in Ho Chi MinhCity and Hanoi began to follow in the Mekong Delta’s footsteps in usingeco-friendly packaging materials to replace plastic.

Nguyen TienThanh has set up the Dong Thap Aqua (aquaponics) Farm in Lap Vo district in hisnative Dong Thap province.

Accordingto Thanh, aquaponics is essentially organic cultivation of plants andanimals together in a circulating closed system.

It doesnot use soil, and the roots of the plants are exposed to a mineral solution ormay be supported by an inert medium such as perlite or gravel.

Insteadof using fertilisers and chemicals to grow the plants, aquaponics uses wastefrom fish, which is turned by micro-organisms into nutrients for the plants.

Insteadof treating the wastewater from the fish tanks and discharging into theenvironment, aquaponics uses the plants to purify it and return it to thetanks. Thus the water can be used for unlimited time and is only replaced whenit evaporates.

In theshop on his farm, Thanh uses banana leaves instead of plastic bags to wrap hisproduce. He also uses baskets made from banana trees to pack vegetables such ascabbage and cucumber just like in rural vegetablemarkets.                 

He alsobuys products from other farms to sell and all of them have qualitycertificates.

Thanhsaid: “Banana leaves have for long been used as wrapping materials. The use ofbanana leaves to wrap goods has been supported by customers. Wrapping in leaveshas helped make our goods more attractive to local and foreign customers.”

He ishappy since his business does not harm the environment. His produce sells wellthough prices are 30 percent higher in the market, and he earns more than 3billion VND (129,200 USD) a year.

Huynh NhuTruc, who opened Handy House to sell eco-friendly bags recently in Cao Lanh districtin Dong Thap, plans to replace plastic packaging material with eco-friendlybags including knapsacks made of natural materials which decompose in nature. Shealso uses eco-friendly paints to create her bags.

Inaddition to fashionable bags, Truc is also making bags for women to use whengoing shopping or to the market to reduce the use of plastic bags.

She said:“We sell 1,500 – 2,000 knapsacks and handbags a month. We’re seeking partnersto expand.”

To promoteeco-friendly products, Vo Minh Khang, general director of Hung Hau FoodsCompany Limited based in Dong Thap’s Sa Dec city, said after seeing plasticstraws being phased out in developed countries he studied and began tomanufacture eco-friendly rice flour straws. Sa Dec is home to a 100-year-oldrice flour village.

Trucsaid: “I would like to manufacture clean straws which help protect the environmentand people’s health. The materials for our straws include 80 percent rice flourand the rest wheat and other flours.”-VNS/VNA