Behavior Change in Local Systems To Mitigate Ocean Plastic Pollution
Behavior Change in Local Systems To Mitigate Ocean Plastic Pollution
Behavior Change in Local Systems To Mitigate Ocean Plastic Pollution
May 2020
This document was produced by Sara McTarnaghan and James Ladi Williams, Urban Institute, for
review by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It was prepared under
USAID's Communications, Evidence, and Learning (CEL) Project (contract GS00F061GA
7200AA18M00006), implemented by a consortium led by the Training Resources Group.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions to the design and execution of
this case study from USAID colleagues including Clare Romanik and Silvia Petrova in the Ocean
Plastics Team and the USAID Mission in Vietnam, including Brittany Thomas. We also thank Henri
Disselkoen and Marianne Carliez at Development Innovations Group, Nguyen Ngoc Ly at the
Center for Environment and Community Research, Nguyen Thi Hoai Linh at Environnment et
Developpment Du TIERS-MONDE Vietnam, and Jennifer Anderson and Drake Mayo at Training
Resources Group for their helpful review and feedback on an earlier draft of this report. We
appreciate the formative input on the case study approach from practitioners at Circulate Capital,
Ocean Conservatory and National Geographic Society. Finally, we thank Lien Bach for her skillful
interpretation of interviews in Vietnam and for supporting local research efforts.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Every year, an estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic waste ends up in our oceans, 1 damaging marine
life, coastal communities, and the livelihoods of people who depend on marine resources to earn a
living. The majority of ocean plastic pollution stems from the mismanagement of plastic waste on land,
specifically in rapidly urbanizing and fast-growing emerging-market cities. In these contexts, solid waste
management (SWM) infrastructure and systems have struggled to keep pace with increasing waste
volumes, fueling leakages of plastics into the ocean.
In 2016, USAID launched the Municipal Waste Recycling Program (MWRP) to address this challenge
in urban and peri-urban areas of four countries: Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.
Through grants and technical assistance, MWRP supports local innovations to improve solid waste
management and recycling. Underpinning USAID’s approach is an understanding that marine plastic
pollution is a global problem with local origins. Solutions must be rooted in local realities, guided by
the knowledge of communities and stakeholders, whose inputs are crucial for the design and
implementation of effective interventions. Local organizations implementing grants under MWRP often
target behavioral changes, at the individual and community levels, to improve solid waste management.
This case study report explores the efforts of MWRP projects to create behavior change in two
Vietnamese cities. In Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Towards Higher Effectiveness of Informal Sector
Waste Pickers in Increasing Plastic Waste Recycling (The Informal Sector on Plastics) was implemented
by Environnement et Développement du Tiers-Monde (ENDA). In Da Nang City, Plastic Recycling in
Strong Communities in a Green City (Oceans without Plastics) was implemented by the Center for
Environment and Community Research (CECR). Both projects have behavior change goals of reduced
plastic use, increased waste separation, and increased recycling. Through a qualitative case study, we
sought to understand how the projects have addressed plastic pollution by changing relevant human
behaviors, to gather insights on aspects of the project contexts that support or impede behavior
change goals, and to document lessons that can inform future programs.
Key findings from our research are as follows:
• Effective solid waste management can help reduce ocean plastic pollution, but in
places experiencing rapid economic growth and urbanization, solid waste
management is an increasingly complex public service to deliver. Inadequate
infrastructure and low technical capacity disrupt the flow of core waste management functions,
such as transportation and final treatment of waste. Two factors exacerbate these challenges:
limited financial resources in local government and the unwillingness of households to pay for
services beyond waste collection. The absence of necessary waste management infrastructure
discourages households from practicing recommended behaviors (e.g., waste separation).
• In Vietnam, regulatory measures are important enablers of behavior change but
need strong enforcement to be effective. HCMC and Da Nang recently changed
regulations to require households to separate waste (a targeted behavior change for ENDA
and CECR), but both cities have weak enforcement mechanisms. Without the right
infrastructure and technical capacity, enforcing solid waste management regulations is difficult
for local authorities. In Vietnam, regulations are a necessary but insufficient condition to create
behavior change; the weak enforcement environment tempers the effect of such regulations
on households’ waste management behaviors.
• In both cities, solid waste management functions are shared between state and
nongovernmental actors (households, community groups, the informal sector,
the private sector, and civil society), suggesting that achieving large-scale behavior
change requires inputs from and collaboration among diverse stakeholder groups.
Especially in HCMC, informal sector actors play a significant role in waste collection, working
in parallel with local utilities. They also dominate the recycling ecosystem, without sufficient
Based on these findings, there are several program and policy implications for future efforts to
address plastic pollution through behavior change:
2 The global plastics value chain “ranges from the extraction of raw materials for plastics production to final disposal of the
plastic or plastic containing products” (UNEP, 2018).
behaviors but need help translating those intentions to action. Because behavioral
bottlenecks can vary between individuals and across places, solutions are likely to have a
better chance at success if their design is informed by evidence on how and why people
behave the way they do in a given context. In other words, project designs need to ensure
that they are targeting the right problem in the right places.
• Policies strengthening the recycling ecosystem are needed to divert plastics
from landfills. Getting households to reduce plastic use and separate plastic waste is only a
first step; it has limited impact on diverting waste from landfills in the absence of a strong
recycling market and system. As recycling in both cities is largely informal and small-scale,
there is room for policy action to build the capacity of existing actors and attract new
business investments in the sector, with a view to increasing recycling rates.
CONTENTS
FRAMING THE DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE 7
RESEARCH METHODS 13
SOCIAL INCLUSION FOR IMPROVED WASTE MANAGEMENT IN HO CHI
MINH CITY 15
DECENTRALIZED RECYCLING: A NEIGHBORHOOD
APPROACH, DA NANG CITY 30
CROSS-CUTTING THEMES 44
RECOMMENDATIONS 46
REFERENCES 48
ACRONYMS
CECR Center for Environment and Community Research
CITENCO Ho Chi Minh City Urban Environment Company
CS Citizen science
DONRE Department of Natural Resources and Environment
ENDA Environnement et Développement du Tiers-Monde
HCMC Ho Chi Minh City
IWC Independent waste collector
MWRP Municipal Waste Recycling Program
NGO Non-governmental organization
PC People’s Committee
SC Steering committee
SWM Solid waste management
URENCO Urban Environment Company
USAID United States Agency for International Development
VND Vietnamese dong
THE GLOBAL CHALLENGE OF OCEAN PLASTIC POLLUTION
When a 2015 Science3 report revealed that a staggering 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean
each year, marine plastic pollution gained attention as an urgent environmental challenge that
warranted a global response. Before this study, there was no known estimate of the amount of plastic
entering the ocean despite abundant evidence of plastic debris in the marine environment. And if
current trends persist, the annual input of plastics into the ocean will be twice as much by 2025,
reflecting growth in population and waste generation rates consistent with economic growth. 4
More than 80 percent of mismanaged plastic waste entering the ocean comes from land, and five Asian
countries account for more than half of total mismanaged plastic waste: China (27.9 percent), Indonesia
(10.1 percent), the Philippines (5.9 percent), Vietnam (5.8 percent), and Sri Lanka (5.0 percent).5 The
majority of plastic at risk of leaking into the ocean comes from rapidly urbanizing and fast-growing
emerging markets.
The impact of plastic debris on marine life is well established. Plastics affect approximately 700 species,
including some that are endangered.6 Plastic entanglement can injure or kill sea animals, which are also
harmed when they ingest microplastics and the myriad contaminants they carry. Evidence of impacts
on human health is more limited. Consuming fish or other seafood contaminated by microplastics
could carry risks, but the available evidence indicates that the risks to human health are likely negligible.
For instance, studies show that microplastics in fish are typically found in areas not commonly eaten
by humans, such as digestive organs.7 However, ocean plastic pollution has socioeconomic impacts:
the loss of wildlife and the damage to the aesthetic value of the environment hurt coastal communities,
including the people who rely on marine industries to earn a living.8 Further investigation and solutions
are needed.
Measuring changes in behavior is a challenge, so most studies capture attitudes and intent rather than
empirical evidence of behavior changes. In addition, there is a dearth of studies that focus on behavioral
solutions to marine plastic pollution in developing countries.
36 Thompson, 2018.
37 Jambeck, 2017.
38 U.S. Government Publishing Office, n.d.
39 Jambeck et al., 2015.
40 Save Our Seas Act of 2018.
The two cases were selected because the projects had made significant progress on implementation:
the Towards Higher Effectiveness of Informal Sector Waste Pickers in Increasing Plastic Waste
Recycling (Informal Sector on Plastics), implemented by Environnement et Développement du Tiers-
Monde (ENDA) in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), and Plastic Recycling in Strong Communities in a
Green City (Oceans without Plastics), implemented by the Center for Environment and Community
Research (CECR) in Da Nang City. Figure 1 below summarizes the two projects.
Across, 28 interviews the research team interviewed 45 stakeholders; 25 of them were associated
with CECR’s project, and 20 with ENDA’s.
The methodology for the qualitative data collection has two limitations worth noting. First, no
interviews were conducted with regulators or policy-makers at the national level who could speak
to evolving Vietnamese national priorities and plans for SWM and ocean plastic reduction. Second,
interviewees were selected with the help of MWRP grantees, meaning that targeted program
beneficiaries who were less engaged or refused to participate in the program were not captured in
data collection.
Looking more broadly, the Vietnamese case studies contain lessons for other interventions related
to ocean plastics. However, the unique structure and role of the Vietnamese government—which is
transitioning the country from a communist model into a socialist-oriented market economy—
means that program approaches and lessons learned may not be replicable in other contexts.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Solid waste generation in HCMC is growing rapidly, creating challenges for local
authorities to deliver adequate SWM services. Independent Waste Collectors (IWCs) are
vital actors in SWM processes, especially for recycling efforts.
• Reducing the vulnerability of IWCs through protective gear, safety trainings, and increased
income can support SWM goals, such as increased recycling, but there is a need for
increased coordination across actors and effective policy implementation.
• To create better habits around plastic disposal, NGOs can use awareness-raising tactics
that help residents understand plastic pollution and improve their ability to engage in
desired behaviors. But without adequate infrastructure, behavior change is unlikely to take
root among households.
HCMC is one of two core urban systems that have driven Vietnam’s rapid economic growth in recent
years.45 HCMC generates more than 20 percent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product despite having
less than 10 percent of the country’s population and a negligible share of its land area.46
HCMC has made remarkable progress in reducing poverty, and the standard of living has improved
significantly. A surge in the use of motorbikes across the city is one proxy for rising incomes and the
emergence of a middle class.47 Although less than 2 percent of the population lives below the poverty
line,48 urban living in HCMC is not without its challenges, particularly for lower-income residents who
struggle to cope with rising costs of living.49 Many of HCMC’s poor, including rural-urban migrants,
work in vulnerable informal sector jobs without social protection or benefits. Against this backdrop,
population growth and the city’s economic dynamism have combined to increase pressure on public
infrastructure. Government action is required to maintain a healthy urban environment, and
Rapid economic growth and urbanization in HCMC have come with environmental costs and quality-
of-life concerns. The environmental issues that the city is facing include air pollution (driven by
emissions from transportation), water resource challenges, and plastic pollution. Urbanization and
industrialization processes have put pressure on the city’s water resources as the city struggles to
meet the needs of households, agriculture, and industry. Also, water quality has been hurt by pollutants
such as leachate from landfills and industrial wastewater, 50 an indication of inadequate waste
management. In recent years, plastic pollution has emerged as an important environmental concern in
the city, reflecting national-level prioritization of the issue. Indeed, in December 2019, the Prime
Minister of Vietnam approved a National Action Plan for Management of Marine Plastic Litter.51 Against
the backdrop of economic and population growth, HCMC’s waste generation rates have increased,
without commensurate development in the capacity of the city’s waste management system to deal
with the growing volume of waste.
50 Vo, 2007.
51 UNDP Vietnam, 2020.
52 Verma et al., 2016.
53 Verma et al., 2016.
DYNAMICS OF INFORMALITY
As is the case in other cities in Southeast Asia, the informal sector is an integral part of the SWM
system in HCMC. According to ENDA’s project team, government actors recognize that the informal
sector collects an estimated 60 percent of waste in the city. ENDA’s project team and other
stakeholders estimate that the city has about 4,200 IWCs, 2,000 street waste pickers, and about 1,816
informal recycling agents known as junk shop owners, who purchase recyclable materials. But the
World Bank’s What a Waste 2.0 report estimates HCMC’s IWC workforce to be as large as 16,000
people, a much higher number than the estimates made by respondents in our sample.59
57 Academic reports estimate the HCMC waste collection coverage rate to be 97 percent (see Kaza et al., 2018.).
58 Vo, 2007.
59 Kaza et al., 2018.
“IWCs don’t have many benefits in their job. This is a dangerous job and
harmful when they have to handle waste. Other workers may have benefits like
danger pay from government, but for IWCs, they only have the fees.”
– IWC Cooperative Leader
Working as a waste collector comes with social stigma. To many interviewees, it was clear that most
households do not respect IWCs, let alone treat them with dignity. Some government action may be
necessary to increase respect for IWCs among households, although local authorities have so far not
been a reliable source of support for them.
62IWC cooperative and IWC syndicate leaders said in interviews that upgrading vehicles would cost 100 million to 220
million VND ($4300 to $9,470), an amount that most IWCs cannot afford.
The overarching strategy of ENDA’s USAID-funded Informal Sector on Plastics project is to increase
social protection for workers in HCMC’s informal waste management sector through activities
described in Figure 3. The team has a vision of IWCs’ having access to government-funded benefits
that support their social and economic development.
ENDA’s Informal Sector on Plastics project began in October 2017 with funding for activities to take
place over a 2.5-year period. The project activities described below cover a range of issues related to
IWCs’ welfare and vulnerabilities, household waste management behaviors, and SWM policy.
Assessing program outcomes is beyond the scope of this study, and we have not collected or analyzed
data on them. That said, the interview protocols included questions driving at stakeholders’
perceptions of what worked best with ENDA’s project, as well as the challenges that arose during
implementation. On the question of what the project appears to have done well, a selection of
stakeholders highlighted improvements in IWCs’ negotiation skills and job safety, as well as an increase
in community awareness of the dangers of plastic pollution.
“The biggest problem with plastic waste is that there is a huge amount of
plastic bottles and cups and straws that we see everywhere. People buy drinks
because they are thirsty, and they litter. If they are more aware of the
environment, at least they will take the trash home or bring it to a trash bin.”
– independent waste collector and junk shop owner
Absent a consensus, it seems likely that factors other than awareness influence households’ waste
management behaviors, a conclusion for which the literature offers substantial support. 64 Several
stakeholders see a clear role for government action to raise awareness of waste separation and
environmental issues in general. We found that awareness-raising activities are a core component of
63When asked to comment on the level of community awareness of plastic pollution, recycling, or waste separation, a
government official in our sample said he could not rate the status of the behaviors, citing a lack of data.
64 For examples, see Afroz et al., 2017; Ahmad et al., 2016; Ari and Yilmaz, 2017; Chan, 1998; Nguyen et al., 2015; Pakpour
et al., 2014.
“Vietnam’s economy developed before the knowledge and attitude of the people
developed. People only think of convenience when it comes to plastic use. They
don’t think on environmental effects.” – Member of ENDA Project Team
PROJECT BEHAVIOR CHANGE GOALS AND MECHANISMS
In pursuing its broad goal of improving IWC welfare, ENDA’s project targeted the following changes
in four behaviors that have implications for the city’s waste management outcomes:
• increased at-source waste separation
• increased waste recycling
• reduced quantities of waste (i.e., reduced use of single-use plastics)
• reduced stigmatization of IWCs
These targeted behaviors are interconnected in that proper separation of food waste and inorganic
waste from recyclables is necessary for recycling to work. Success on these fronts advance the effort
to mitigate marine plastic pollution by diverting plastics from landfills, which reduces the amount of
plastics at risk of leaking into the ocean. Relatedly, targeting reductions in the use of single-use plastics
contributes to mitigation of plastic waste by reducing the overall volume of plastic waste generated in
the project context.
Our interviews and review of project documents found that education and awareness-raising were
the main tools that ENDA’s MWRP project used to try to change behavior. ENDA’s education and
awareness-raising activities included community meetings and door-to-door outreach in which project
staff members shared information about waste separation, the impacts of plastic pollution, and
strategies to prevent it.
PERSONAL FACTORS
Plastic use habits are hard to break, but understanding the dangers of plastic pollution
and the benefits of waste separation and recycling is helpful for people.
Our interview data show that people’s past behaviors and their plastic-use habits are constraints to
behavior change. Stakeholders explained that plastics are a small but integral part of people’s lives,
which makes reducing plastic use difficult for people even if they have been exposed to information
about plastic’s harmful effects. According to one government official who was interviewed, two factors
have helped sustain plastic-use habits, making behavior change even more challenging to realize:
convenience and availability. The literature review conducted to inform this study found that
convenience is strongly associated with the intention to use plastic.67 As for availability, a member of
ENDA’s project team cited the low price of single-use plastics as one reason that merchants refused
to give them up.
“Behavior doesn’t change easily when a habit is set. Even when we tax plastic
like 2,000 – 3,000 VND [approximately $0.10], people are still willing to pay
for plastic even though the price is higher. This is because of convenience.”
– Government Official
Education level—along with associated attitudes, awareness levels, and knowledge—may play a role
in enabling or constraining behavior change. As one IWC cooperative leader explained, education level
is one factor that determines whether people are aware of environmental issues, leading to a
conclusion that for less educated people, “it is difficult to change their behavior from old to new ways.”
A key assumption here is that people with more education are more likely to be aware of
environmental issues and to respond positively to behavior change interventions like ENDA’s
awareness-raising initiatives. The literature appears to include some empirical support for this
reasoning, given that some studies have found that education level is positively associated with people’s
willingness to participate in campaigns that encourage them to reduce their use of plastic bags.68
Importantly, another factor that influences people’s decision to engage (or not) in recommended
behaviors is their perception of the extent to which doing so will make a difference. For example, our
data analysis concluded that households in ENDA’s target population are skeptical about the impact
of waste separation, and, as one IWC syndicate leader suggested, when households doubt the benefit
of separating waste, they are less inclined to respond well to programming that encourages them to
do so. A government official in our interview sample suggested that residents are less motivated
to separate waste if they feel that their individual actions would not make a significant
impact on the complex challenge of marine plastic pollution.
66 This is the definition of enabling factors in the public health context, according to Oxford Bibliographies (see Gilmore,
2013).
67 For additional information, see Lam and Chen (2006).
68 For additional information, see Afroz et al. (2017).
SITUATIONAL FACTORS
Availability of infrastructure, enforcement of SWM regulations, and social norms shape
waste management behaviors of households.
This study finds that decisions about whether to engage in certain waste management behaviors, like
waste separation or recycling, are not made in a vacuum but are influenced by situational factors.69 At
least two things are noteworthy here: the regulatory environment and social context in which people
are expected to perform the behavior (e.g., waste separation) and the availability of infrastructure
needed to perform the behavior.
First, a few stakeholders observed that changing the behavior of Vietnamese people is difficult. They
said the existence of laws or regulations that require waste separation is an important condition, if
not a prerequisite, for changing households’ waste management behaviors. Although HCMC has a
regulation that requires households to separate waste, the weak enforcement environment discussed
above is an impediment to bringing about the desired behavior change. Recognizing this challenge, a
few respondents suggested that better enforcement of SWM regulations would lead to
increased household waste separation, with government officials noting the importance
of imposing fines, especially when awareness-raising efforts have failed.
Given that people’s behaviors are often influenced by what they consider to be socially acceptable, we
can view the waste separation regulation as an external tool to make waste separation a norm in the
city. Viewed from this lens, the absence of the social expectation that every household should separate
waste is a constraint to behavior change. Behavior change goals are difficult to realize in HCMC, where
government cannot enforce its waste separation regulation and no social expectation for people to
separate waste exists.
“People know that it is wrong to violate rules or discharge waste, but they still
do it because they know that they can get away with it. They won’t do
separation at home, but when they move overseas to Singapore, they change
their behavior.”
– Government Official
Second, our research strongly suggests that the lack of necessary infrastructure and synchronized
waste management processes are constraints to behavior change. Three district/city-level
infrastructure gaps are noteworthy: i) the inability of IWC and CITENCO to collect and transport
food and inorganic waste separately; ii) the limited number and capacity of transfer stations, and iii)
the lack of facilities for separate final disposal of food and inorganic waste. As a result, IWCs and
CITENCO workers typically end up disposing of food and inorganic waste together, thereby defeating
the purpose of household separation of waste.
According to several stakeholders, many households feel that they have no reason to
separate their waste because they know CITENCO is unlikely to have separate
treatment of different types of waste. This observation illustrates the earlier point that external
factors (in this case, the availability of infrastructure) influence people’s perception of the benefits of
69 Existing literature often characterizes such external forces as “situational” or “environmental” factors.
PHOTO: USAID/URBAN
This section presents the case study of Da Nang City, where CECR’s MWRP project, Oceans without
Plastics, was implemented between October 2017 and June 2019. Key takeaways are in Box 2.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• In Da Nang City, the pressing issues for solid waste management, according to
stakeholders who were interviewed, include inadequate infrastructure, especially for
waste treatment; low management and technical capacity; and the limitation of recycling
to high-value plastics.
• Oceans without Plastics was designed to reduce plastic pollution by promoting at-source
separation and recycling through a participatory approach anchored to women’s
leadership.
• Strengths of the intervention noted by stakeholders included the connection to scientific
data on environmental harm and impact and practical guidance on how to take individual
and collective action to address the problems.
• Behavior change is possible when people feel empowered, with skills and resources, and
are encouraged by fellow community members to carry out desired waste management
behaviors.
CITY CONTEXT
Da Nang is a coastal city in central Vietnam that had just over a million residents as of 2018. It is the
third-largest city in Vietnam and one of the countries’ major port cities. Da Nang is a tourism hub and
receives approximately three million tourists annually. Da Nang is also a business-friendly environment,
recognized in a national survey as one of the best Vietnamese cities for doing business.70
The city has been a leader in urban environmental movements within Vietnam. It adopted a citywide
green growth strategy in 2008 that committed to transforming Da Nang into an environmentally
friendly city by 2020.71 This plan responded to the pressures of population growth, urbanization, and
the decreased quality of environmental resources like water, air, and soil. The city is also tied into
“smart” city movements and is committed to modernization of public administration and use of
technology. Da Nang was also accepted as part of the 100 Resilient Cities network, which sought to
build social, economic, and physical resilience to natural and man-made shocks by supporting the
integration of resilience in member cities’ urban planning. Under this initiative, the city also released a
citywide resilience strategy in 2015.72
Key environmental issues in Da Nang include flood risks and waste management, especially as the
Khanh Son landfill nears capacity. The city is committed to improving waste management and recycling
for greenhouse gas mitigation.73 Furthermore, clean oceans and environments are important to the
city’s tourism economy, which has motivated the city to take actions and make commitments on this
issue.
establishing solid waste classification at source; creating a solid waste treatment complex that includes a recycling module,
composting, energy collection from incineration, and hazardous waste classification and treatment; and more.
74 Dang, 2018.
75 Japan International Cooperation Agency, 2014.
76 Lee et al., n.d.
• SWM data are inadequate. There is a lack of data to inform policy decisions on solid waste
management. Data on daily waste generation, informal waste collection activities, and recycling
are limited. Additionally, there is limited information on the share of households that separate
waste. Not only do these data gaps preclude local authorities from having a full grasp of the city’s
waste management challenges, but they also hinder an effective policy response.
“If women, youth, and local communities are equipped with sufficient
information and capacity to carry out innovative community-based waste
reduction and recycling, then creating a supporting and empowering
partnership of local authorities, women, communities, and recyclable waste
collectors is likely to lead to more widespread and effective reduction in ocean
plastic pollution.”
Interestingly, the project sets out a vision for shared responsibility and contribution for effective
management of waste among individuals, communities, and government.
PROJECT DESIGN
The overarching strategy of CECR’s Oceans without Plastics is to train residents in coastal
communities in Da Nang to manage plastic waste. CECR’s project used a neighborhood-based training-
of-trainers approach to pilot local recycling models, targeting behavior change goals of increasing
household segregation of waste and recycling. See Figure 6 for an overview of project activities. The
project’s designers and stakeholders think of the model as balancing the existing top-down approach
with a bottom-up approach, providing opportunities for neighborhoods to connect with one another
to improve their communities. To accomplish its goals, CECR emphasized partnership with local
“We have so many other projects. What makes this project different is that
CECR provided practical training to participants. When they participate in the
project, you are trained immediately on what to do, practically—you are more
motivated to do it. It was not just theoretical. They engaged in the project
through their real work. The work they were doing was simple, so they feel that
they were about to do the job. It was so simple that everyone— youth, women,
others—could do it.”
Flexibility and adaptability to community-level contexts were key principles of the intervention.
CECR’s community recycling model was not designed to be uniform across districts. Indeed,
communities had the final say on what model to pursue. As a member of the program team put it:
“The model that CECR proposed was flexible—they just provided a model and
framework. Based on the reality of each district or communal level, they can
adapt to unique needs of each district.”
Some areas opted to focus on composting, others recycling. And some did both. As one stakeholder
put it, “What made CECR different is that they engaged all stakeholders in community to make clear
that it’s the responsibility of everyone to separate waste.” For example, the training manual created
clear typologies for community action on plastic pollution, as documented in Table 2.
The purpose of this model is to establish The purpose of this model is to separate plastic waste,
consensus in the community on the necessity of collect and sell the plastic waste to IWCs and
separating waste at source. URENCO, after which the plastic waste is transferred
to recycling centers.
• Step 1: Establish a steering committee (SC)
for the residential area. • Step 1: Agree on the method/process to collect
• Step 2: The SC meets to develop an action waste in the residential area.
plan for the residential area. • Step 2: Households commit to practice waste
• Step 3: The SC meets with all households in separation under the guidance of the SC.
the area to communicate, share feedback, and • Step 3: Collect and sell waste to IWCs or
build consensus around the action plan. URENCO.
• Step 4: Implement the action plan. • Step 4: Record data on nonorganic waste
• Step 5: Monitoring, supervising, and reporting. according to agreed schedules.
• Step 5: Monitoring, supervising, and reporting.
Women are at the center of SWM in Da Nang because of the traditional division of household
responsibilities and a history of action by the women’s union. CECR’s project effectively built on this
legacy by putting women at the center of the design and intervention. The project leaned heavily on
the women’s union for the implementation of the waste separation and recycling model. This was a
strategic decision on the part of the project designers, given the broad and deep reach of the
women’s union and its history of involvement in recycling. According to a government partner, “the
reason why they selected women’s association for campaign is because women association are the
one who could reach out wider and deeper.”
However, stakeholders noted that past efforts had not focused as intensively on plastic pollution. As
such, the CECR project targeted households in target districts for the following behavior changes:
• Reduce use and increase reuse of plastic products, especially plastic bags from markets
• Begin to separate organic, recyclable, and inorganic waste
• Collect and sell recyclable materials to IWCs, URENCO, or recycling agents
• Compost organic waste in community structures
As noted above, before the project, efforts had been made to encourage some of the targeted
behaviors, aligned with the three Rs, but stakeholders estimated that adoption of these practices by
Da Nang residents was limited.
PERSONAL FACTORS
Behavior change is possible when people feel empowered, with skills and resources, and
are encouraged by fellow community members to carry out desired waste management
behaviors.
Knowledge of the issue, including technical know-how of how to address it, is a major enabler of
behavior changes pursued related to waste reduction and recycling. The clear link between plastic
use and mismanagement and environmental harm as demonstrated in the CECR training materials
motivated actors to not only assume more environmental awareness but also move to a sense of
community responsibility to protect the environment. For example, neighbors felt they should not
only change their waste management but also encourage community members to do the same. One
neighborhood created a community mural about the environmental hazards of marine plastics and
positive recycling practices. One trainer described the response to knowledge as: “People
reacted passionately and curiously. They were surprised with the reality and
got to realize that it’s not responsibility of government alone but also their
responsibility for environment. They kept asking me about the issues, and this
was encouraging.”
Such positive responses to the new knowledge encouraged communities and businesses to adopt
new practices like reducing the use of plastic bags. This lends credence to CECR’s project design
choice to prioritize raising awareness.
On the other hand, stakeholders reflected that convincing people to adopt waste management
behaviors such as separation and composting is difficult if they do not understand why it is
important. Trainings were limited, and recruiting all community members to participate in such
offerings can be hard. As such, knowledge and technical know-how are both enablers and constraints
of behavior change. This is supported in the literature, which suggests that people are likely to take
on the recommended behavior if they feel as though they can perform the behavior.77
One enabling factor is past behavior and attitudes, which are influenced by social forces—gender
norms in particular. Gender was frequently cited as a factor in engagement with SWM
issues, and stakeholders unanimously recognized women as taking more leadership than
men in the effort to reduce plastic pollution. In part, this followed the project design, working
closely with the women’s union to implement the program. Interviewees noted that waste
management at the household level is considered a traditional task of women as part of housework.
Several interviewees noted that women appreciated the urgency of the issue and moved
to action, with women leaders involved in the project diligently applying the acquired
knowledge. A local trainer reflected that after just a few trainings, one woman reduced the number
of plastic bag she uses from 80 plastic bags per week to 10 and that on some days, she did not use
77 For examples, see Shen et al., 2019; Strydom, 2018; Tonglet et al., 2004.
SITUATIONAL FACTORS
For changes in households’ SWM behavior to take root, SWM processes must be
reliable, and a functioning resale market for plastics is crucial.
As in HCMC, interviewees in Da Nang emphasized that the convenience of plastic use and its ready
availability are barriers to desired waste management practices. People use plastic as a matter of
habit. Using alternatives often requires households to make structural lifestyle changes that are
inconvenient, and as a result, behavior change goals, such as waste separation or recycling, suffer.
Although a few stakeholders committed to alternative practices, such as reusable bags, they noted
that breaking tradition, especially in market settings, is difficult.
Infrastructure affected people’s ability to change to desired behaviors in big and small ways. At the
household level, most residents live in small houses and cannot store their separated
waste in a hygienic way. As such, many households did not separate their recyclable and organic
waste and were reluctant to keep separated organic waste in their homes for an extended period.
Under the project’s waste separation model, household-separated waste was to be picked up only
once a week. This meant that practicing waste separation came with a cost of living with trash for a
week. To bypass this cost, households abandoned separate waste disposal and opted to dispose of
their waste through URENCO, which had a more regular pickup schedule than CECR’s model.
On a structural level, a lack of trust in solid waste management systems discourages households
from separating waste and recycling. Household incentives to separate waste and recycle dissipate
upon realization that URENCO disposes of organic and inorganic waste together. URENCO’s lack
of capacity for separated transport and treatment of waste prompts many to lose trust
in the system. This is even though households have high levels of awareness of waste separation’s
importance. One government official explained, “The reason why they refuse to separate
waste is because they know that after they separate it, everything will be put in
the truck together, so there’s no point. Even at landfill, waste won’t be
disposed separately.”
Project partners held a similar view: “In Da Nang, there’s only one landfill for waste. And Da Nang
doesn’t have any other places to put waste. At the end, separated waste is dumped together. When
people notice this, people become demotivated. Therefore, the city needs to think of how it treats
waste at the end.”
This reality implies that the project’s behavior change goals are inextricably linked to the availability of
infrastructure.
Although infrastructure is part of the story, a functioning resale market or value chain for recyclable
materials is equally important, and the lack of one was noted as a key challenge to realizing the
program’s goals. Indeed, it was cited as the key reason that the plastic bag recycling effort was not
successful. During project implementation, women were encouraged to separate, clean, and store
plastic bags for recycling, which committed women’s groups did despite the inconvenience. CECR
RECOMMENDATIONS
To support future USAID ocean plastics programming in advancing the goal of improving SWM, we
offer the following recommendations.
POLICY-LEVEL RECOMMENDATIONS
• Prioritize investments that address structural barriers to waste separation and
recycling, especially a lack of infrastructure. This study demonstrates that a lack of SWM
infrastructure (e.g., treatment facilities) is associated with an increased risk of plastic leaking into
the ocean. Additionally, the lack of infrastructure is a barrier to improved solid waste management
practices—even among people who are well-informed on environmental issues or intend to
behave in environmentally friendly ways. These infrastructure gaps limit the impact of USAID-
supported behavioral solutions to waste management challenges.
Underpinning these infrastructure gaps is a lack of national and municipal financial resources for
the investments needed in infrastructure for waste collection, transport/transferring, and disposal
systems. As a starting point, USAID could support analyses to estimate the magnitude of the
infrastructure funding gap, with a view to developing creative solutions to help meet the funding
need. Working within the U.S. interagency, USAID could, for instance, help secure guarantees to
reduce the risk of investments in waste management infrastructure or undertake investments.
Such strategies, like the Agency’s $35 million partnership with Circulate Capital,80 can attract
private capital to infrastructure projects. Additionally, USAID could undertake projects to enhance
the creditworthiness of waste management utility companies in Vietnam, thereby improving their
access to capital markets. With the emergence of the United States International Development
Finance Corporation, USAID may have opportunities to leverage innovative financial instruments
to support investments in SWM infrastructure. This approach would require a clear definition of
how such investments advance congressional and Mission priorities.
USAID can also build coalitions with other development partners willing to finance investment in
SWM infrastructure. Those efforts may consider how best to maximize financial resources
through partnerships with local and international private sector stakeholders. Such efforts could
be informed by studies (funded by USAID or in partnership with others) that identify and assess
80 See U.S. Agency for International Development (2019) for further details.
PROGRAM-LEVEL RECOMMENDATIONS
• Support social assessments of behavioral drivers of plastic pollution to inform
program designs and implementation. Future USAID programs related to SWM should
incorporate behavioral diagnosis at the planning stage to shed light on the internal and
environmental factors that shape waste management behavior in a given context. Such analysis will
seek to gather insights into the forces that sustain the status quo and in the process reveal
behavioral bottlenecks and opportunities for programmatic interventions. In this process, the
assessment will also help programs identify the appropriate behavior change goals for a given
context. Ultimately, this would allow for an approach to programming that takes into account the
individual, social, and practical constraints to behavior change. Data generated from a social
assessment would help program designers better understand where their interventions are likely
to make a difference and guide decisions on trade-offs between alternative intervention designs
amid resource or other social limitations.
• Support community-based organizations in developing monitoring and evaluation
frameworks, including methodologies for measuring behavior change. There is a need
for systematic approaches and guidance for defining and measuring behavior change in the MWRP
context and in the field more broadly. Because current MWRP projects do not collect baseline
measures of household waste management behaviors, it is difficult for them to track, let alone
explain, progress toward stated behavior change goals. The ability to learn from program
implementation can be significantly strengthened though investments in grantees’ capacity to
measure behavior change.
• Build the policy advocacy capacity of local community-based organizations to
enhance partnerships with local authorities. Addressing plastic pollution requires significant
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