Thirty-eight-year-old Truong Thi Anh Nguyet, mother of 2 children, started to collect waste on the busy streets of Danang city in Vietnam about 3 years ago. Before doing this, she was a housekeeper at a local hotel. But because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, she turned to informal waste work. Now that the pandemic conditions have lessened, she continues to collect waste while also working a new housekeeper job. Twice a day, she rides a bicycle into the alleys and asks to buy all recyclable waste from households. This includes mostly metal scraps and high value plastic waste as well as paper. She sells the waste to a junk shop in her district, making about $12 a day.

After attending a training organized by iDE, she learned that single use plastics, which she did not collect at the time, can be collected and sold for more money. She was then introduced to another junk shop in her location who offered to buy all the single use plastic waste that she can collect. Since then, she started to collect and buy single use plastic from households and make more money. “This is not much extra money buying and selling, but the extra work is minimum, so as long as I can make more money and help keep the environment cleaner, I’m very proud,” she said.