Trash — VietEcon

Everyone’s favorite topic: garbage. Turns out Vietnamese cities have a fair amount of it, and they (like everyone else) are having problems figuring out what to do with it. A few points:

People don’t like to live near landfills, especially if they are smelly. That’s a real problem in the Phu My Hung area in District 7. People are protesting, and truly does sound like the smells are noxious.
Ho Chi Minh City is not the only place. The government was going to invest in Da Nang’s landfill to add a waste-to-energy plant, but neighbors protested at the site to stop it. They believe there is going to be more pollution because of it, which is probably true. Reducing pollution from plants like these cost money, and it is probable that the city government won’t spend it.
Hanoi residents protested at a landfill after not receiving promised compensation to move, resulting in trash piling up around the city.
According to the UN, Vietnam will produce more than 0.8 kg of urban waste per capita, (or 22m tons). Most of this waste is not sorted, and therefore is just dumped into open landfills. There is little waste-to-energy, little incineration, few sanitary landfills, and while program in place, there is little follow-through on implementation of projects.
This is basically the same as in most of ASEAN, except for Singapore. Less than 50% of all waste is sorted at the source for almost every country except the Philippines. Most of the waste is food or organic waste, which may be compostable. However, the same UN study said that most farmers don’t want to use compost in Vietnam, so maybe the end market is just not there.

This is a real quality of life issue, and it is probably going to get worse as Vietnam gets richer. There is a movement to reduce single-use plastic (I wrote about it on June 25, 2019 - scroll down to read), but ultimately there is going to be more waste, and the government should start investing in this now. It will improve quality of life, it will reduce pollution, and it will make the air smell better for these poor people.

Just to add another hitch, I saw this article today about containers filled with plastic in the port in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. The government is trying to find out who is responsible (which doesn’t seem like it would be too hard). This is just one more in a line of poor countries refusing to take trash from wealthier countries. Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have done the same.

This means that wealthier countries need to find a solution in their own countries, which is going to be hard. The problem is exemplified by this story in the US (read it here) about a train filled with treated New York poop was stopped in Alabama, because communities didn’t want it transported through their town. At some point, wealthy parts of the US (and other rich countries) will have to start figuring out what to do with all of this waste.

Maybe there will be some technological solution. If not, everyone is going to have to drastically reduce waste.