New focus: A waste disposal is seen as a worker operates an excavator at a dumping site in Hung Yen province near Hanoi. According to city planning reports, only 33% of this waste is treated through composting, incineration without energy recovery or recycling. — AFP
HANOI: More than 67,000 tonnes of household solid waste are generated across Vietnam daily, yet only a fraction – just 20% to 25% – is recyclable.
The rest, ranging from single-use plastic bags to foam boxes and food scraps, end up in landfills, burnt in open pits or dumped into the environment.
These figures illustrate a crisis growing in both scale and complexity: a waste management system that is overwhelmed and falling behind the pace of urbanisation and economic growth, said Ho Kien Trung, deputy director of the Agriculture and Environment Ministry’s Department of Environmental Pollution Control.
While Vietnam’s economy has expanded rapidly, so too has its waste.
The country now ranks among the fastest-growing waste generators in the Asia Pacific region.
In urban areas alone, more than 25 million tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) are produced annually – a figure that is expected to surge to 40 million tonnes by 2030 if no meaningful interventions are made.
Despite these staggering volumes, the country’s recycling and waste-to-energy capacity remains limited.
Only about 15% to 20% of household waste is treated using modern methods like incineration or recycling.
The vast majority is either buried in landfills, many of which are unsanitary, or left untreated, posing mounting environmental and health risks.
In Ho Chi Minh City, approximately 10,000 tonnes of MSW are collected daily, most of which are transported to landfills in Da Phuoc and Phuoc Hiep.
According to city planning reports, only 33% of this waste is treated through composting, incineration without energy recovery or recycling.
The remaining 67% is sent to landfills, continuing a decades-long trend of inefficient disposal. Hanoi fares no better.
As of 2022, more than 90% of its daily 8,000 tonnes of waste was still being buried.
While the Thien Y waste-to-energy plant has since begun processing around 5,500 tonnes of garbage per day, roughly 3,000 tonnes still end up in landfills, representing a missed opportunity to recover energy and reduce environmental harm.
In Hai Phong, a daily load of over 2,000 tonnes of MSW presents an escalating challenge for a city still heavily reliant on burial as its primary disposal method.
Furthermore, Vietnam also faces a mounting crisis in plastic waste. — Viet Nam News/ANN
