Cambodia launches river cleanup

Cambodia didn’t launch this river cleanup because of one dirty shoreline. It launched it on April 1 because river tourism is growing, and officials say the growth is colliding with plastic waste on the Mekong, Bassac, and Tonle Sap waterways. (undp.org) The campaign is being run by Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism with the United Nations Development Programme, which is the United Nations agency that funds and helps manage development projects. It sits inside a wider Plastic Circularity Project backed by the Coca-Cola Foundation. (undp.org) The target is not just trash on riverbanks. The target is the tourism system around the rivers, where boats, food service, and hospitality businesses rely heavily on single-use plastic because they serve large numbers of short-stay customers in tight spaces. (phnompenhpost.com) That is a big deal in Phnom Penh alone, where more than 60 tourist boat operators work the city’s rivers. More boats mean more cups, bottles, food containers, and bags, and officials say waste systems on many tour boats are still limited. (phnompenhpost.com) Cambodia’s tourism minister, Huot Hak, tied the cleanup directly to the economy. He said tourism is one of Cambodia’s main engines for jobs and growth, but river tourism is now under pressure from plastic pollution and littering habits that make the same waterways less appealing to visitors. (english.news.cn) The government is also pushing a simple rule: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle. That “4Rs” approach is meant to change what boat operators, hotels, restaurants, and travelers use before the waste ever reaches the water. (english.news.cn) The backdrop is bigger than tourism. Cambodianess reported that the wider project carries more than $1 million in funding from 2024 to 2027 and is being implemented in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Sihanoukville with support from the Ministry of Environment as well. (cambodianess.com) Phnom Penh’s waste numbers show why officials are treating this as a systems problem, not a one-day cleanup. The city generates about 4,200 tonnes of waste a day, and local officials say roughly 20 percent of that is plastic. (cambodianess.com) Cambodia is trying to protect an industry that is already large. The tourism ministry says the country received 5.56 million international visitors in 2025, plus 2.5 million domestic travelers, so even a small reduction in single-use plastic per trip can add up fast. (cambodianess.com) So this campaign is really a bet on two things at once: cleaner rivers and a cleaner tourism brand. If Cambodia can get boats and riverfront businesses to cut plastic before it leaks into the water, the same rivers that carry visitors through Phnom Penh and beyond become easier to sell as part of a “green gold” tourism economy. (cambodianess.com)