There is so much garbage piled up on both sides of the Duong Dong River that its water flow is impeded and the marine environment -- it flows into the Gulf of Thailand -- is threatened.

The local administration is warning islanders but the thousands of households along the 15-kilometer river simply ignore it, Nguyen Phu Nam, head of the local Department of Natural Resources and Environment, said.

“Dumping garbage into the river is the most convenient way to dispose it of,” a fish seller in the local market said, claiming she does it because the garbage is collected from the river.

Ngo Van Giao of Duong Dong town gets up early every morning to collect trash from the river bank. The 82-year-old said: “I collect plastic stuff which earns me around VND20,000 a day.”

Many of his neighbors have stopped selling lottery tickets on streets and begun to scavenge for plastic on Phu Quoc’s beaches to earn their living, he added.

Every day an average of four cubic meters of garbage is collected from a five-kilometer section of the Duong Dong River between Hung Vuong Bridge in Duong Dong town and Dinh Cau Port, estimated Nguyen Van Ngoc, director of the Phu Quoc District Public Project Management.

“We have two boats for collecting the garbage, but we cannot use both at the same time because of a budget constraint,” he said.

The Phu Quoc District Public Project Management set up a garbage-collecting team four years ago. The island government is considering setting up one more, but there seems no solution to stop the littering in the first place.

Tran Quoc Khanh, director of the Phu Quoc Trade and Tourism Promotion Center, recalled an American tourist telling him that “Phu Quoc has fresh air and friendly locals, but it is a shame the environment is being threatened by garbage and motorbike exhaust.”

Phu Quoc Island was one of the top 10 beach destinations in Asia last year, according to Tripadvisor’s 2010 Travelers’ Choice List.