Hanoi People's Committee chairman Tran Sy Thanh recently issued a plan to implement the city's Bright Green Clean Beautiful emulation movement.
Hanoi is struggling with the increasing air pollution (Photo by Tienphong)
Under the plan, the city aims to ensure that 75-80 percent of the days in a year have air quality index levels rated as good or moderate. By 2030, the annual average fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration at most standard monitoring stations will be maintained below 40 µg/Nm³ in urban areas and below 35 µg/Nm³ in suburban areas.
To fulfil the targets, 100 percent of construction sites must carry out dust reduction measures, 100 percent of industrial emissions must comply with national environmental standards, and 100 percent of households must stop using honeycomb coal stoves or low-grade coal fuels. Particularly, straw and agricultural byproduct burning must be ended, along with a reduction in joss paper burning.
According to a study by the University of Natural Sciences, in the 2020 Winter-Spring crop alone, 384,505 tonnes of straw were left on Hanoi's fields. Around 20 percent of this was burned, emitting 179.08 tonnes of PM10, 163.3 tonnes of PM2.5, and 23,000 tonnes of CO2, all of which are environmental pollutants.
PM2.5 is a silent killer in the air, closely associated with numerous respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.
The Vietnamese government has issued a decree on administrative penalties for environmental violations. According to the decree, outdoor burning of crop byproducts near residential areas, airports, or major roads is subject to fines of VND2.5 million.