VietNamNet Bridge – Investors are willing to spend money to build modern garbage treatment plants which would generate electricity and make compost fertilizer. However, they need the amounts of garbage big enough to run.

A report showed that 23 tons of domestic garbage is discharged every day from urban areas, while 85 percent of the garbage has been dumped at the landfills and only 15 percent has been treated to make compost fertilizer.

According to Nguyen Trung Viet, Chief Secretariat of the HCM City Office for Climate Change Studies, about 9,200 tons out of the total 23,000 tons of garbage every day (40 percent) can be burnt to generate electricity with the total capacity of 200 MW.

HCM City alone discharges 7,500 tons of garbage every day, which could be a big source of fuel for making electricity.

Scientists repeatedly say that Vietnam is wasting its garbage when dumping it. Meanwhile, the garbage can be used for many useful purposes. Investors, both foreign and domestic, have committed to pour money into garbage treatment projects. However, very few such projects have been developed, for many reasons.

Masanori Tsakahara from Japanese Hitachi Sozen said at a workshop held in early March 2013, that his company was considering the feasibility study to build a plant which burns garbage to create electricity. The plant is expected to burn 1,000 tons of garbage every day, with the capacity of 25MW in the Tay Bac Cu Chi solid waste treatment complex. The total investment of the project is estimated at $100 million.

However, he said, the company still needs to consider relating factors to ensure the smooth operation of the plant. If the plants runs 8,000 hours a year, and the electricity price is $0.05-0.2 per kwh, the garbage treatment cost would be about $40 per ton.

Nguyen Thanh Lam, a senior official from the Agency for Waste Control and Environment Improvement, commented that no province and city would have enough money to afford such a high cost.

The Da Phuoc Solid Waste Treatment Complex in Binh Chanh district in HCM City, invested by VWS, reportedly treats 3,000 tons of garbage for the city every day. Though it is a complex with modern technologies which aim to treat garbage in an industrial scale, most of the garbage still has been dumped.

The problem here is that the garbage carried to the complex has not been classified; therefore, the garbage treatment plant still cannot start its operation.

In fact, the HCM City’ dwellers have been encouraged to classify garbage right at their houses to help the industrial garbage treatment process. A pilot program on classifying garbage was initiated many years ago in district 6 many years ago.

However, the program has not been applied in a large scale in the whole city, while local people in district 6 have also given up the classification.

The problem was that the dust-carts were too old which did not have two trays to put different kinds of garbage. Therefore, the people’s garbage classification was useless, because garbage all was put all together into the same garbage trucks.

In fact, urban dwellers have been classifying garbage themselves for a long time. They can sell papers and some plastics to cast iron dealers, who would carry the refuse to the private run garbage treatment workshops. However, the government does not encourage the private workshops, which have been polluting the environment with the backward treatment method.

SGTT