HCMCity (VNA) -ꦜ The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Natural Resources and Environment plans to change the waysolid waste is classified at source to suit treatment technologies, its chiefhas said.

Speaking at a meeting held bythe department on January 3 toreview its performance last year and make plans for this year, director Nguyen Toan Thang said the city’s focus with regard tourban solid waste management is onrecycling and burning technologies. Thus, instead of threecategories, organic, recyclable and other wastes, rubbish just needed to beclassified into two, recyclable and others, he said. The department has submittedthe proposal to the People’s Committee for approval and expects to introducethe change in the first quarter of this year. The city has closed fivelandfill sites to reduce burial of solid wastes. It has also made urbandevelopment plans at two of them, Go Cat in Binh Tan districtand Dong Thanh in Hoc Mon district. Around 15 developers have expressed interest in building parks orhousing at the two sites, Thang said. The city is also taking stepsto reduce the volume of buried waste and adopt advanced waste-treatmenttechnologies. Late last year, construction work began on two waste-to-energy plants in Cu Chi district with a daily processing capacity of2,000 tonnes, and an industrial and hazardous waste-treatment plant in Binh Chanh district with a capacity of 500 tonnes. Work on another solidwaste-treatment plant will start this month. The Da Phuoclandfill site in Binh Chanh district, which receives more than 5,000tonnes of rubbish a day now,will become full and is expected to be closed by 2024. Last year a total of nearly2.88 million tonnes of solid waste were treated. The city generates 9,500tonnes of waste daily, including 23 tonnes of medical waste and 350-400 tonnesof hazardous waste. The city collectedenvironmental protection fees from 3,505 production establishments last year.The fees exceed 12.5 billion VND (540,000 USD) per quarter. There were more than 1,860private garbage collectors, who were either members of environmental cooperativegroups or had their own business. The department organised anumber of activities to spread the message to the public that trash should notbe discarded indiscriminately.

It also installed more than33,600 dustbins in public places.

All supermarkets, shopping malls, convenience stories and bookstores in Ho Chi Minh City are encouraged to swap plastic bags for environmentally friendly options; while 50 percent of merchants at traditional markets are expected to do the same by 2020.

The city also wants all solid waste sorted at source by the same year, with 50% of local households and other sources of waste sorting their garbage in line with regulations and standards.

In 2017, up to 38,000 tonnes of municipal waste was generated a day in Vietnam and a lack of proper solutions to the waste problem is harming the urban environment.

A group of specialists, including Le Hoang Anh, Mac Thi Minh Tra and Nguyen Thi Bich Loan, from the Northern Centre for Environmental Monitoring Portal under the Vietnam Environment Administration discovered municipal solid waste in the country increases 10 to 16 percent each year.

Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang and Hai Phong account for 45.24 percent of solid waste generated by urban areas.

Up to 70 percent of municipal solid waste is household waste.

Plastic waste makes up 7 percent of solid waste, about 2,400 tonnes a day.

ꦓ Up to 95 percent of plastic waste in Hanoi, however, is buried. The percentage in Ho Chi Minh City is 76 percent./.