Solutions to resolve air pollutions
Potential initiative to prevent air pollution in Ho Chi Minh City
1. Public transportation vs personal vehicles
Encourage people to use public transportation as possible and prohibit using personal vehicle gradually until 2030.
The first advantage of public transportation is cut down the number of personal motorbike, car on a street at same time and reduce dirty exhaust smoke efficiently.

Fewer cars means there is less carbon and other gasses and pollution getting into the air. This protects the environment by keeping the air, water, and land cleaner.
There are many kind of public transportation in HCMC with several price from cheapest to high price and suitable for every HCMC resident.
Bus
All of services are available over HCMC, spread out from District 1 to urban area, such as Binh Tan District or District 12
Bus is best solution with cheapest price and easy communication with bus driver. Otherwise, a bus network covers all districts. The price for bus ticket fluctuates between 3,000 and 10,000 VND, depending on the distances and the type of buses.
Furthermore, the distance between each bus stops are nearly 100 meters and are available on famous place in HCMC like Ben Thanh Station, Cho Lon Station and Mien Dong station.

There are many main route we can find here (1)
#152 (Trung Son Resident — Tan Son Nhat): These two route have stops at Tan Son Nhat International Airport, and with these buses, you can easily get to the center of the city.
#19 (Saigon — Trung Linh — National University): This route begins from Ben Thanh Market, head to the center of the city and cross the Saigon Opera House. Then it comes to Highway 1A before heading to the National University.

Car pooling
Car pooling is share car if you and your friends who have same route direction. As a result, it saves much money and time together.
Uber — a famous technology US company — offer potential service. It calls uberPOOL. (2)
When you want the cheapest ride. Most affordable ride options. For exapmple: Comfortable sedans, Convenient shared routes, Maximum of 2 riders per pickup.

As you can see, by saving space and only use only one car. It also reduce air pollution.
According to recently research, each day, taxis provide an average of 400,000 trips. But peak share-ability is already achieved at just 25% of that, or 100,000 daily trips.
That means that taxi-sharing systems would be effective in cities with just one quarter of the taxi demand of New York City. (3)
2. Choose Fuel Efficient Vehicles.
When we fill gases, we should look for gas efficient vehicles with low greenhouse gas emissions. These cars can help the environment while potentially saving you money on fuel costs at the pump.

Furthermore, there are many options here. For example, Electric vehicles, Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and Cleaner burning gasoline vehicles. (4)
3. Conserve energy
Before going out, guarantee you swift off fans and lights.
Everyday large amount of fossil fuels are burnt to produce electricity. We can save the environment from degradation by reducing the amount of fossil fuels to be burned.

Buy compact fluorescent bulbs, which reduce energy use by up to 75 percent. Set a goal of at least replacing the bulbs that are most commonly on in your home.
Recycle aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic, cardboard and newspapers. Using recycled materials in manufacturing consumes less energy than using virgin materials.
4. Potential project over the world
Brick’s made from Beijing Smog
A small artist group name “Nut Brother,” has a crazy and potential initiative to make brick by collecting dust particles from smog. They had been spent for 3 months and collect approximately 100 gram dust from the air and mixed up with clay, then turn it into single brick.
Although it was a simply a stunt to raise awareness about China’s air pollution problem, it illustrated that air pollution could perhaps be made into something tangible. (5)

5. Plan more Parks and green tree over HCMC
Green spaces are a great benefit to our environment.
They filter pollutants and dust from the air, they provide shade and lower temperatures in urban areas, and they even reduce erosion of soil into our waterways. These are just a few of the environmental benefits that green spaces provide.

Reduced heat buildup
Trees in a parking lot can reduce on-site heat buildup, decrease runoff and enhance night time cool downs. Tests in a mall parking lot in Huntsville, Ala. showed a 31 degree difference between shaded and unshaded areas.

Improved air quality
Trees, shrubs remove smoke, dust and other pollutants from the air.
One tree can remove 26 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually, equaling 11,000 miles of car emissions. One study showed that one acre of trees has the ability to remove 13 tons of particles and gases annually.
2,500 square feet of turf absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and releases enough oxygen for a family of four to breathe. (6)

Urban forests help to improve our air quality. Heat from the earth is trapped in the atmosphere due to high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping gases that prohibit it from releasing the heat into space. This creates a phenomenon known today as the “greenhouse effect.” (7)

6. Get rid of heavy industrial area
Ho Chi Minh City is a city have most number of heavy industrial factories in Vietnam.The smog around city is result of low conditional air conditioner from near factories.
The smog started building up in the steel industry from the North of the city.
The simplest solution is that we should move all heavy industrial factories to far HCMC and have strong law to force every factories have permitted air filter before exhausting to natural environment.

Do Xuan Hoan, a member of the research group from the VSEA’s Green Innovation and Development Centre (GreenID), said the centre conducted a study on the air quality in Vietnam in 2016, focusing on the country’s largest cities, namely Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
According to the study, the average amount of PM2.5 dust (a subtype of atmospheric particulate matter) recorded in the southern economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City was a little bit higher than the national limit, while that in the capital city of Hanoi doubled the allowable level.

Hoan cited electricity generation, heavy industries, means of transports, waste burning, construction, and cooking as main factors that have caused air pollution.
To improve the quality of air, he suggested that the country should quickly reducing artificial air pollution sources from industrial production. (8)
8. Enhance and develop waste treatment area
At first HCM City had two waste treatment complexes: Da Phuoc in Binh Chanh district and Phuoc Hiep in Cu Chi District.
In 2002, the city authorities identified Phuoc Hiep as the key waste treatment zone, which would be invested in strongly to receive 3,000 tons of garbage every day.

Da Phuoc waste treatment complex, invested in by the Vietnam Waste Treatment Company Limited (VWS), was a backup landfill, which only treated waste for the southern area of the city. (9)
The bad odor
The bad odor shrouding the southern part of the city is caused by the Đa Phước Waste Treatment Complex in Bình Chánh District.
He also called for planting more trees near Đa Phước, upgrade its treatment technologies and speed up construction of a new waste treatment facility in neighbor Long An Province.

Đa Phước receives more than 5,000 tonnes of rubbish every day.
Thăng said the long-term solution to eliminating the smell is to upgrade waste treatment technologies so that garbage is treated rather than disposed off in landfills. (10)
9. In conclusion
In Summary, there are many potential initiatives to resolve air pollution in Ho Chi Minh City.
It involves overwhelm of effort from Vietnamese government and Vietnameses resident, and strict law to prevent air pollutions in near future.
10. Referencers
(1) See: https://www.vietnamonline.com/transport/ho-chi-minh-city-bus.html, https://www.uber.com/en-VN/
(2) See: http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/causes-effects-solutions-of-air-pollution.php
(4) See: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/08/asia/china-pollution-artist/index.html
(5) See: http://projectevergreen.org/resources/environmental-benefits-of-green-space/
(6) See: https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/units/urban/local-resources/downloads/Tree_Air_Qual.pdf
