Vietnam has been repeatedly warned that landfills cannot be used for a long time, because they require a large dumping ground, and the land fund is limited, especially in large cities.

Thomas Loesche from Loesche Group said most landfills have a negative impact on the environment as they pollute underground water and generate methane that contributes to climate change.

There are other risks. A large landfill collapsed in Sri Lanka in 2017 after heavy rains, burying 150 houses under tons of waste and killing 24 people.

Recycling waste and processing it into useful materials, therefore, is the best solution.

The PM last May approved the national strategy on solid waste management until 2025, emphasizing that industrial solid waste is considered a resource which needs to be collected, classified and treated in conformity with management technology. 

The government is encouraging the processing of waste into materials, fuels and environmentally friendly products.

There are 82 cement production lines in Vietnam with total designed capacity of 97 million tons per annum, and the figure continues to rise.

“The energy demand for cement production is huge. If using recycled waste as alternative fuels in cement production, this will bring great benefits in environmental protection and natural resource saving,” Khanh said.

According to Mai Thi Lien Huong from the Ministry of Construction, many waste treatment establishments have been set up in the last 10 years. However, most of the establishments are small, with only 30 establishments having capacity of 200-300 tons per day. 

Of these, only two establishments in HCMC are capable of receiving 1,000 tons of waste a day. However, the proportion of waste treated and recycled is modest. This is attributed to difficulties in treatment because the waste is not sorted at source, and to the low calorific value in waste. 

Tais Mazza from Loesche said in Europe, people have to pay a lot when discharging waste into the environment, and the source of revenue is used to treat waste. 

Therefore, if Vietnam collects waste discharge fees, it will have money to treat waste which will attract investors to the waste treatment sector.

Huong also thinks the sanitary fee can be raised step by step in accordance with local conditions. The source of revenue will allow the state to reduce its spending on waste treatment. If this occurs, Vietnam would bury only 10 percent of waste by 2020 instead of 80 percent as it does now.

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