Since I was a child, I have been on the streets and wondered why there is rubbish everywhere. I have noticed some empty land that after some time unexpectedly became a landfill. Along the two sides of highway, there is also rubbish. Those images are not far from us, are not in other countries, but right here in the leading city of Việt Nam: Ho Chi Minh City.

I think people are getting used to those images. They may think those are normal. Actually, I used to think that way. However, since I became a student of Environmental Engineering at the Faculty of the Environment and Labour Safety, Tôn Đức Thắng University (TDTU); I have learned about a great wealth of environment, pollution and climate change. Since then, I have completely changed my mind on our surrounding environment. I started to ask myself “Am I living in a beautiful city or on a huge landfill?” I recognized that those spontaneous landfills do not only have an influence on the surrounding areas but also on the whole residential zones. The beauty of the areas and the health of community are all affected. I also recognized that the thought “those landfills not close to my house will not affect me” is wrong. They have actually affected me and all other people around the city. They have affected the water resource we all have used.

Therefore, a group of students from the Faculty and me started a plan to change those landfills into flower gardens. After 3 days of conducting a survey, setting up ideas and developing a design, together with 10 million dollars and 5 days of action (cleaning up trash, improving soil and using recycled materials), we changed those landfills into beautiful flower gardens. Besides planting flowers, we propagated the idea among the people so that they would take care of the garden every day.

Following are some images from the journey of those students who are young enthusiasts of TDTU

That is the first successful flower garden which we planted. But there are still so many spontaneous landfills around this city! Will those landfills disappear? Will we be able to change all those into such a flower garden?

We – students, who carried out this flower garden, believe that it is “possible”. If there is a consensus and support in term of labor and fund from the community, the landfills will gradually become parks or flower gardens. Currently this is a dream, but it is a kind of dream which can become true.