05/03/2020
In recent years, the environmental pollution caused by a large amount of domestic solid waste generated in localities across the country is a challenge that governments of all levels, sectors and localities need to focus on solving. In order to make a substantial change in the domestic solid waste management, improve environmental quality and contribute to improving the quality of people’s lives, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) is actively implementing specific activities to strengthen the management and control of domestic solid waste throughout the country.
To better understand the current situation of domestic solid waste management in Việt Nam and the urgent solutions to control the environmental pollution caused by domestic solid waste, the Vietnam Environment Administration Magazine (VEM) had an interview with Dr.Hoàng Văn Thức - Deputy General Director of Vietnam Environment Administration (VEA) on this issue.
Dr. Hoàng Văn Thức - Deputy General Director of VEA
VEM: Could you please tell us a little bit about the current situation of domestic solid waste management in Việt Nam today?
Dr. Hoàng Văn Thức: In recent years, along with the socio-economic development, the strong population growth and the rapid urbanization in our country have led to an increase in the amount of solid waste generated, including both the composition and nature of solid waste that has been causing difficulties for waste management and treatment, especially for domestic solid waste which has a significant impact on the environment.
According to the results of the survey and assessment of the VEA, currently, the volume of domestic solid waste generated nationwide is more than 61.000 tons/day, of which more than 37.000 tons/day and more than 24.000 tons/day are generated in urban areas and rural areas, respectively.
Recently, the management of domestic solid waste in Việt Nam has not been applied with the form of integrated management and has not been paid much attention to in terms of solutions to minimize, reuse, recycle and recover energy from waste, as a result, the volume of domestic solid waste to be landfilled is high, thereby not saving the land, and has been a risk of environmental pollution. On the other hand, the separation of solid waste at source only takes place in some localities and has not been replicated nationwide. In addition, the issues of infrastructure, equipment and specific collection facilities for each type of waste are not yet appropriate, leading to inefficient waste separation at source.
The collection and transportation of domestic solid waste are implemented differently between urban and rural areas, among localities and even among areas within the same locality. In urban areas, the waste generated by households is usually collected by the collection units at a certain time, manual vehicles are used by the collectors to transfer waste to the gathering places, from which it is transported to the treatment facilities ortransshipment terminals before being moved to the treatment facilities. In rural areas, many localities have self-governing groups and women's unions that collect waste at a certain frequency and transport them to gathering places so that the functional units shall collect, transport and transfer them to the treatment facilities. However, in many cases, waste is not collected or not collected thoroughly, leading to the formation of temporary landfills, causing environmental pollution.
Meanwhile, landfills are often far away from residential areas, which increases transportation costs. Currently, thecharged upon households and individuals for domestic solid waste collection, transportation and treatment only partially cover waste collection cost;, there is not enough money to pay for the cost, as well as to maintain transporting activities; the transportation capacity of some localities is still limited, without specialized equipment and means of transport, resulting in leakage and spillage of waste into the environment.
At the same time, the implementation of solid waste management planning in localities is still slow; the mobilization of investment resources for construction of solid waste treatment facilities and plants has many difficulties. The investment in solid waste management and treatment is still inadequate; though many solid waste treatment facilities have been built and operated, their facilities, capacity and treatment efficiency have not met the requirements. In particular, many unsanitary landfills and incinerators have not yet met environmental technical standards, causing environmental pollution due to the generation of secondary wastes such as wastewater, gaseous emissions and solid waste .
VEM: Recently, in the process of implementing policies and laws on domestic solid waste management in localities, what are the difficulties and limitations and their causes?
Dr. Hoàng Văn Thức: According to current regulations, the State management of solid waste is not uniformly assigned to one agency but to many Ministries and branches involved in the management, including: MONRE, Ministry of Construction (MOC), Ministry of Health (MOH)... The overlapping of the State management functions in the field of solid waste leads to many difficulties in the implementation of policies and laws on solid waste management.
Besides, in the current legal documents, there is still a lack of guidance on appropriate technology selection and technical guidance on domestic solid waste collection, storage and treatment. Solid waste recycling activities are still scattered, spontaneous and lack the management and control of the competent authorities on environmental protection in the locality. The majority of recycling facilities are small in scale, the level of technology investment is not high, the majority of technologies are outdated, the machinery and equipment are oldobsolete, which causes environmental pollution. The construction of modern waste treatment facilities and sanitary domestic solid waste landfills requires large investment capital, while many localities do not have enough capital to invest; the mechanisms to promote socialization of domestic solid waste collection and treatment are inadequate and have not yet attracted resources. Many imported solid waste treatment technologies are not suitable with the features of domestic solid waste in Việt Nam (not yet separated at source, low calorific value, high humidity). Meanwhile, domestically-manufactured equipment and technologies for treatment of solid waste are not yet comprehensive or , complete and have not been manufactured on an industrial scale; the inspection and supervision process of the construction and operation of some solid waste treatment facilities isyet to be strict...
VEM: In your opinion, do the current domestic solid waste treatment technologies in Việt Nam meet the treatment requirements?
Dr. Hoàng Văn Thức: Currently, in Việt Nam, the most common technology for domestic solid waste treatment is landfilling, besides, there are composting, burning and recycling. The current waste treatment rate by the treatment methods is as follows: 71% of total waste (equivalent to 43 thousand tons/day) is treated by landfilling method (excluding waste and ash from compost processing facilities and incinerators); 16% of total waste (about 9,5 thousand tons/day) is treated at compost processing factories; 13% of total waste (about 8 thousand tons/day) is treated by incineration method.
The domestic solid waste treatment technologies being applied (both domestic and foreign technologies) are increasingly diverse, but their actual effectiveness has not been fully assessed. Although a number of domestically developed technologies have been applied in recent years and brought about certain initial results, these technologies are mostly undertaken by private enterprises, so the improvement of technologies as well as the application in reality still faces many difficulties. Foreign technologies used in Việt Nam face difficulties due to unseparated solid waste at source, high humidity, tropical weather conditions; the amount of received solid waste is lower than the designed capacity or is unstable, the investment capital is quite high, leading to high treatment costs.
In localities, most of the landfills receive domestic solid waste that are not separated at source and have high organic content, so their stability is low, occupying a large area of land and generating a large amount of leachate. Some unsanitary landfills have been a source of environmental pollution, affecting health, as well as production and living activities of surrounding communities.
VEM: In order to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the State management of solid waste in the coming time, what are the solutions to control the pollution caused by solid waste, ?
Dr. Hoàng Văn Thức: On February 3rd, 2019, the Government issued Resolution No. 09/NQ-CP , which assigns the MONRE as the focal point to unify the State management of solid waste. Following the Government's direction in Resolution No. 09/NQ-CP, the MONRE quickly issued a Plan to implement the Resolution; to organize the review of legal documents related to solid waste management, including assessing the organization and apparatus from the central to local levels in solid waste management; to inspect and evaluate solid waste management in the whole country to capture the current situation of solid waste generation and treatment; to organize the State management workshops on solid waste, workshop on solid waste management and treatment technology models to exchange and discuss the current State management situation, the current solid waste management and treatment technology models in Việt Nam; to promote propaganda on solid waste and prepare to organize a national conference on solid waste management. The Ministry is implementing the task of preparing environmental protection planning, including the content of solid waste planning.
In order to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the State management of solid waste in the coming time, it is necessary to concentrate onimplementing well the following solutions:
Solutions on organization, management, mechanism and policy: To strengthen the organizational system for solid waste management from the central to local levels; To revise the functions, tasks and the State management of solid waste of the Ministries to implement a consistent State management solution on solid waste; To review and clearly define the responsibilities of the People's Committees from the provincial to the district and commune levels, the responsibilities of professional agencies, socio-political organizations, socio-professional organizations, production, business and service establishments and community in waste management; To study and formulate incentive and support mechanisms and policies, encourage the collection, transportation and investment of waste treatment facilities suitable to local socio-economic development conditions; To develop mechanisms to encourage private economic sectors to participate in construction investment and directly manage, exploit and operate waste treatment projects (after construction projects are completed, their effectiveness, stability and sustainability must be ensured); To encourage reuse, recycling and recovery of energy from waste (such as biomass recovery models from food waste; methanol recovery from domestic waste, food, leftovers; methanol collection, creating biofuels from waste cooking oil), applying a variety of ways to treat organic waste sources to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change response.
Solutions on communication, awareness raising and human resource development: To promote the propagation and introduction of contents of waste management regulations to all levels, sectors, communities, organizations and individuals; To strengthen exchanges, visits and experience learning in the implementation of waste management, focusing on feasibility and suitability when applying the same waste treatment model among localities; To train and strengthen human resources for waste management; To promote the propagation, training and organization of training courses for enterprises on cleaner production, minimizing the generation of solid waste, the process of collecting, transporting, treating and recycling domestic solid waste in accordance with the law; To promote the development and dissemination of databases and websites on domestic solid waste; technical guidelines on domestic solid waste management and treatment.
The Deputy Minister of MONRE Võ Tuấn Nhân and the MONRE Delegation visited the domestic waste-to-energy
plant model of Cần Thơ City) on March 5th, 2019
Solutions on investment and finance: To promote socialization of solid waste collection, transportation and operation of treatment facilities; to gradually increase the sources of sanitation charges, gradually reducing support from the budget for collection and transportation of domestic solid waste; to review amendments, supplements and promulgate the unit price of solid waste treatment with energy recovery; to expand the State credit support for investment projects, recycling, reuse and energy recovery projects from domestic solid waste, as well as incentives on taxes, fees and charges. At the same time, to review and research to minimize procedures in the process of loan deployment, including borrowing from the concessional capital source to implement domestic solid waste treatment projects applying technologies suitable to Vietnam's conditions; to formulate a public procurement policy to prioritize procurement of environmentally - friendly products and products after the recycling and waste treatment process from the budget; to select appropriate locations to invest in waste treatment and recycling centers at inter-regional and inter-provincial scale.
Solutions on supervision, checking and inspection: To strengthen the coordination among the local State environment management agencies in strictly controlling waste treatment areas, landfills adjacent to localities and inter-provincial waste transportation; To strengthen supervision of the implementation of the National Strategy on overall solid waste management, increasing investment to build solid waste management capacity towards green and low carbon development; To drastically require localities to implement environmental criteria within the framework of the implementation of the National Target Program on new rural development without investing in small incinerators that fail to meet environmental technical regulations; To strengthen the inspection and examination of domestic solid waste collection, transportation and treatment activities to prevent and promptly detect and handle violations.
Solutions on technical support, technology research and development: To study and develop modern and environmentally-friendly domestic solid waste treatment technology in the direction of minimizing landfilled domestic solid waste, increasing the rate of recycling, reusing and recovering energy from waste; To study, transfer and apply the best available technologies, environmentally friendly technologies; To promote the development of pilot models on recycling, reuse and recovery of energy from domestic solid waste in order to select suitable models for replication throughout the country.
VEM: Thank you very much!
Phương Linh (Implemented)
(Source: Vietnam Environment Administration Magazine, English Edition III - 2019)
