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Send in the cleaners: Workers put a bit of shine on HCM City. —VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Phan

HA NOI — Separating and recycling litter were the main topics of a recent solid waste management seminar held in HCM City, which presented several projects on waste treatment to be completed by 2005.

The city counts about 6,600 tonnes of daily solid waste including litter from households, industries, constructions and clinics. Daily litter has nearly doubled since 1998, according to Nguyen Thi Dung, deputy director of the municipal Transport and Public Work Department.

Local authorities are worried about forecasts announcing an increase of solid waste volumes to 7,000 tonnes per day by 2010, because measures for treating current waste volumes are still ineffective despite investment and a growing work force.

The city’s Transport and Public Work Department has carried out three campaigns on waste sweeping and 18 campaigns on waste collecting and transporting, but the amount of solid waste treated only added up to 5.400 tonnes.

Main waste treatment areas are situated in Dong Thanh and Go Cat covering a total area of 65ha while smaller dumps are located in Binh Chanh, Can Gio and Cu Chi districts.

Solid waste pollution is a growing threat to the environment, according to the Centre for Environment Technology and Management (Centema). Despite having a slower dispersion than liquids and gas, solid waste still heavily pollutes water, gas and land.

Technology processes to collect, transport and treat solid waste have been upgraded while dump-filling methods remain inadequate. Existing dumps such as Dong Thach and Go Cat pollute due to design and construction failures.

The city is in somewhat of an impasse: when a dump is full, it must be replaced by another one, which will in turn be a source of pollution, leaving the full dump without maintenance.

Waste collecting and recycling are the most feasible ways to reduce the volume of solid waste, said Dr. Nguyen Van Phuoc from the Environment Department of HCM Polytechnic University.

After recycling, waste becomes plastic, rubber, paper or glass. Solid waste is a valuable material resource to produce energy, gas, solvents, lubricants or chemicals.

"Daily litter is 70 per cent organic and is a rich material source for producing quality organic fertilisers," said Dr. Nguyen Duc Luong also from Polytechnic University. "Yet municipal authorities have not been dedicated to long term investment in the field."

To implement feasible measures, HCM City needs to start sorting waste promptly and continue experimental programmes, according to Luong.

One programme asked families to separate daily solid waste into two boxes, one for recyclable waste and the other for organic waste. However, the effect of the initiative was limited because it was implemented in households rather than in public places.

According to Centema’s estimation, if waste sorting factories are set up with effective technical equipment, despite large spending, waste collecting, recycling and selling could procure VND90 billion per year and would bring indirect profit by saving energy and natural resources. — VNS