One bag of trash a day: how a Pakse hotel worker started a cleanup movement across Laos

On the morning of 15 February, Bounpanh Chaleunsin finished his exercise along the Mekong in Pakse and walked home with a bag of trash he had picked up on the way. Eight months later, the habit he named on that walk, One Bag A Day, has about 400 participants in 13 of Laos's provinces, Panh told Good News Daily this week.

Bounpanh, who goes by Panh, is 27 and works at a hotel in Pakse, the main city of southern Laos. He had no organization behind him when he started. He just saw the same litter on the riverbank every day and stopped waiting for someone else to clear it.

The riverbank everyone used, and nobody cleaned

The Mekong riverbank in Pakse is where people exercise, fish, work, meet friends and take sunset photos. By early this year it had become heavily polluted with trash, the group says. Panh used the bank himself, so he saw the problem daily.

The name came to him on that first walk home. He wanted an action small enough that anyone could join: not many bags and not a big campaign, just one bag a day.

“Small actions, big change.” — Bounpanh “Panh” Chaleunsin, founder of One Bag A Day

145 members in Pakse, cleanups at 6:00 and 5:30

Others joined quickly. Between February and early May, the Pakse group grew to about 145 members, with 35 to 40 volunteers who come regularly and 50 to 60 people at some of the larger cleanups. Sessions usually start at 6:00 AM or 5:30 PM, before and after the working day.

After the riverbank, the volunteers moved on to colleges, roadsides, bus stations, the areas behind sports fields, and viewpoints such as Phou Salao, the group said.

A 100 million kip donation took the idea beyond Pakse

The turning point came when three supporters, Dr. Alounxay Sounnalath, Dr. Souksavanh Vilayvanh and Vien William, donated 100,000,000 kip. The money paid for funds and equipment for people in other provinces who wanted to start their own One Bag A Day groups.

Groups now run in 13 provinces. Children and young people have joined in Pakse, Attapeu, Paksan, Luang Prabang, Houaphanh and Oudomxay. The group in Vientiane has its own Facebook page with about 4,400 followers, where it posted a call this month to clean up ahead of the capital's boat racing festival.

The group says the many young volunteers from Gen Z and Gen Alpha are what has moved them most. Many young Lao people care about their country and its environment, the group says, and they only need an opportunity to act.

Next: every province, and reusable cups and bags

The long-term aim is to reach all of Laos's provinces and to make cleaning up public space something people of every age do as a matter of course. The group also hopes to make its own eco-friendly products, such as reusable cups, plates and cloth bags.

Closer to home, the group plans to expand to more districts in Champasak province, of which Pakse is the capital. People in Paksong and Don Talat have already joined, Panh said. He sums up the idea in one line: “One Bag a Day Laos—from one person to a hundred more.”

Community-led cleanups have grown into lasting projects elsewhere too. On Kenya's Pate Island, a community group collected 18.1 tonnes of plastic in eight months and now earns money from the waste.

One Bag A Day has not published how much trash its volunteers have collected so far. Its member figures come from the group itself. Activities and videos are shared on the movement’s TikTok account and on the Facebook page of its Vientiane group.