It seems that garbage collectors make noise outside your house at 4:00 or 5:00 am no matter where in the world you live. Our neighborhood in TP. Hồ Chí Minh is no exception. Garbage collection here is very efficient. (I speak for my neighborhood -- I can only assume the procedures are similar in other HCMC or Việt Nam neighborhoods).
At the end of each day, we and our neighbors hang our garbage out in a plastic bag (or bags) like this.
We and our neighbors do not generate a lot of solid waste because there is very little packaged or prepared food here. Most food comes fresh from the market in quantities suitable to a family's needs rather than the shipping standards of food companies. We therefore throw away very little remains of food and packaging, except for the plastic bags into which everything is placed to bring home.
The garbage collectors come by early every morning with a cart that has a flat table section. They open the plastic bags and rake metal items off to a separate bag for such items, plastic off to a different bag, paper or cardboard to a different bag, and organic waste to a bin. They also sweep the hẻm (lane) as they go along. We pay 10,000 VND (US$.67) for this service at the beginning of every month.
In addition, there are people with carts that come through the hẻm during the day offering to buy discarded materials or machines. We transfer large cardboard and plastic bottles to them for free. Glass bottles go back to the convenience store to cover the deposit paid on them.
Overall, this system is fairly efficient, but Việt Nam on the whole remains a very messy country. Our Man In Hanoi covered the litter situation extensively in this posting that I encourage you to read for the quality of his writing, and be sure to read all of the comments, too.
