VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam has spent big money to build large scale garbage treatment plants. However, the plants are lacking materials – the classified waste – to run.

Waste materials in big demand

Vietnamese packaging manufacturers all complain they are lacking low-cost materials for recycling. Therefore, they have to import materials at high prices, which makes the production costs high.

The reason that forces them to import expensive materials instead of using the plentiful domestic sources of waste is that domestic waste has not been classified.

Duong Van Cao, Chair and General Director of Xuan Duc Paper JSC in HCM City, confirmed that the domestic scrap paper sources just can satisfy 20 percent of the materials for paper plants. The other 80 percent of materials needed has been imported from the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and African countries.

Phan Minh Nghia, Deputy General Director of Tan Mai Paper Group, also ads the domestic sources cannot provide enough materials to domestic paper recycling plants, because the scrap iron collection has not been organized in a professional way. In other words, Vietnam still does not have a professional recycling industry.

Vietnamese Vinaplast initially planned to cooperate with Canadian Merlin Plastics to set up a joint venture to run plastic waste treatment plants in Hung Yen province in the north and Binh Duong province in the south, each of which has the capacity of 50,000 tons per annum.

Later, anticipating the lack of waste materials, the investors decided to lower the design capacity to 40,000 tons. However, the projects still cannot be kicked off because the investors still have not found enough materials for the plants.

It is expected that the recycling joint venture would develop a network in charge of collecting scrap iron, but it’s clear that the network would not be able to provide enough materials. The scrap iron collection has been relying on the force of petty scrap iron dealers.

Trash can also bring money

It takes 2.8-3 cubic meters of acarcia wood to churn out one ton of pulp, while it takes 5-7 years to grow the trees.

It is clearly more profitable to recycle paper from scrap paper than making paper from wood-pulp. About 2.2-4.4 tons of wood is needed to make one ton of pulp, while only 1.3 tons of scrap paper is needed to create the same amount of pulp.

According to David Duong, Chair of VWS, a solid waste treatment company, once the waste classification and recycling plant is put into operation, it would create some 500 new jobs, while it would provide low-cost materials to domestic recycling plants.

State management agencies affirmed that the plant, equipped with large capacity and modern machines, using modern technologies which allow classifying and packing waste, would be an important source of waste materials in the near future.

The waste recycling industry in the US earns the turnover of over $90 billion a year, while it brings billions of dollars in China. Meanwhile, it still does not have much significance in Vietnam.

In fact, Vietnam has poured a lot of money into the industry. However, the investment still has not brought the designed effects, simply because the recycling plants are still hungry for waste.

Thien Nhien