Waste recycling needs rethink

HCM City (VNA) - The city badly needs supportive policies to develop the 3Rs
(reduce, recycle and re-use of waste) industry to deal with the increasing
amount of waste generated, municipal officials say.

Le Van Khoa, director of the HCM City Recycle Fund, says a lot of waste can
be reprocessed to generate composite fertiliser as well as "green"
electricity.

Many countries in the world recycle and reuse up to 90 percent of the waste,
and only a minimal amount is buried in landfills. However, the situation is
reversed in Vietnam , with only 10 percent of waste recycled and reused.

This is not only a waste of resources, but also a burden to the economy,
Khoa said.

Nguyen Van Phuoc, deputy director of the HCM City Department of Natural
Resources and Environment, said that the city alone discharged from 5,500 to
6,000 tonnes of waste per day and most of it is burried in waste dumps.

He said that the city has had to close the Dong Thanh, Phuoc Hiep and Go Cat
landfills because they have been overloaded and it has become increasingly
difficult to find new areas to dump waste.

The department said very few enterprises operate in the 3R industry. The
city has invited investment in waste recycling, but the lack of specific
incentive policies makes it difficult to capture the interest of
enterprises.

In order to deal with the increasingly amount of waste, the city has piloted
waste classification in households in six districts and invested in
technology to generate 'green' electricity. However, the projects have not
been effective because policy support has been missing, said Phuoc.

He said that the city should come up with a comprehensive policy and
strategy covering waste generation, collection and classification that
provides financial incentives to enterprises and encourages the public to
use 'green' products.

Nguyen Van Tai, deputy director of the Institute of Strategy and Policy on
Natural Resources and Environment at the Ministry of Natural Resources and
Environment, said that in 2007, the country discharged 17 million tonnes of
solid waste, including 250,000 tonnes of hazardous waste, 13 million tonnes
of domestic solid waste, 2.8 million tonnes of industrial solid waste and
about 770,000 tonnes of waste from guild villages.

Tai predicts that the amount of waste could increase to 25 million tonnes in
2010. If the country does not pay attention to developing the 3R industry,
the problem will get worse because there will be no land to bury huge
amounts of waste in the near future.