MSW management in HCM city VN- current practices and future recommendation

Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015 doi: 10.1016/j.proenv.2016.07.059 ScienceDirect International Conference on Solid Waste Management, 5IconSW

Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 ( 2016 ) 127 – 139

1878-0296 © 2016 The Authors Published by Elsevier B.V This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015

doi: 10.1016/j.proenv.2016.07.059

ScienceDirect

International Conference on Solid Waste Management, 5IconSWM 2015 Municipal Solid Waste Management in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet

Nam, Current Practices and Future Recommendation

R L Vermaa,*, G Borongana, M Memonb*

a

Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific, Asian Institute of Technology, KlongLuang, Pathumthani, Thailand

b

International Environmental Technology Centre, United Nations Environment Programme, Osaka, Japan

Abstract

Management of solid waste, including the municipal solid waste (MSW), is a major challenge in urban regions of most part of the world, including Southeast Asia Due to the lack of effective management programs, regulations, and policies; the waste is causing severe health hazard including several communicable diseases, bad odors, nuisance, and environmental impacts, such as, contamination of water, soil, and air Most Southeast Asian cities are lacking efficient MSW management programs Thus, in order to contribute to building a good dataset on MSW for the Southeast Asian region, we quantified solid waste generation and analyzed waste composition for Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City is a major urban region of Viet Nam in Southeast Asia In

Ho Chi Minh City, about 8,175 tons of solid waste was generated per day in 2014, consisting 6,800-7,000 of MSW, with 1.02 kg/capita/day generation of waste The trend in MSW generation from 1992-2010 showed that 98,338 tons of MSW has been increasing every year The MSW of Ho Chi Minh City contains 65-90% biodegradable matter The major portion of MSW was food waste from 1.4 million households, 1,837 schools, and 12,000 hotels and restaurants The current common practice of solid waste management in Ho Chi Minh City is landfilling About 86% of the total solid waste was landfilled at two major landfill sites (PhuocHiep and Da Phuoc), and the rest 14% waste was recycled Paper, plastic, metals, glass were the major waste being recycled with a quantity of 3364, 3794, 1124, and 384 tons/month, respectively Further to support the MSW planning in Ho Chi Minh City, we analyzed gaps and SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) and provided recommendations to be incorporated in the action plans for efficient management of solid waste in Ho Chi Minh City

© 2016 The Authors Published by Elsevier B.V

Peer-review under responsibility ofthe organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015

Keywords:Municipal Solid Waste Management, Solid Waste Composition, Landfill, Gaps Analysis, SWOT Analysis Southeast Asia, Ho Chi Minh City;

* Corresponding author

E-mail address:ramlalverma@hotmail.com

© 2016 The Authors Published by Elsevier B.V This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).

Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015

1 Introduction

Municipal solid wastes (MSW) are unwanted materials or wastes primarily generated from households including the offices, hotels, shops and shopping complexes, schools, institutions, and from municipal services, such

as, street cleaning and maintenance of parks, gardens and other recreational areas The major types of MSW are food wastes, paper, plastic, rags, metal and glass, with some hazardous household wastes, such as, electric light bulbs, batteries, discarded medicines and automotive parts Management of MSW is a major challenge in urban regions in most part of the world including Southeast Asia Due to the lack of effective management programs, regulations, and policies; waste is causing sever health hazards including several communicable diseases, bad odors, nuisance, and environmental impacts, such as, water pollution, soil pollution, and air pollution, if the waste is burnt

in an uncontrolled manner Most of Southeast Asian Cities are lacking policies, regulations, basic-infrastructure, and efficient MSW management programs (UNEP, 2004)

With rapid industrialization, urbanization, economic growth, and increasing population with their higher income and better lifestyle, the quantity of MSW and problems associated with solid waste are becoming a serious problem

in Southeast Asia (Dhokhikah and Trihadiningrum, 2012) The generation of MSW in Southeast Asian mega cities

is a large in terms of volume For examples, the MSW generation was 8778 tons/day in Bangkok (Udomsri et al.,

2011), 6000 tons/day in Jakarta (Mangkoedihardjo et al., 2007), and 3799 tons/day in Kuala Lumpur (Saeed et al.,

2009) These cities, in general, are not having enough facilities to manage such huge quantities of MSW This in turn, results several problems related to health and environment, such as, spreading communicable diseases, bad

odors, nuisance, water pollution, soil pollution, air pollution, and others

Limited studies have been conducted on MSW management in Southeast Asia in general and Viet Nam in

particular The Asian Productivity Organization (AOP) published a report on Solid Waste Management: Issues and

Challenges in Asia in 2007 (http://www.apo-tokyo.org/) This report included a chapter on Viet Nam, which pointed

out that the management of MSW, to a certain extent, is inadequate, particularly in urban regions of the country The report stated that there were practices of uncontrolled and long-term storage of waste, disposalon site, non-engineered landfills, and use of waste to fill-up the vacant areas These practices have resulted in the percolation of water soluble hazardous components of the waste to the groundwater and contaminating the groundwater The discharge of waste withoutadequate treatment in waterbodies, such as the rivers, is causing a contamination of surface water which is making the water unusable for drinking and becoming harmful to aquatic life Open burning

of the waste affects the air quality of the region.The chapter on Viet Nam in the above mentioned report was focused

on four provinces/cities, namely, Hanoi, HaiPhong, Hai Duong, and QuangNinh Ho Chi Minh City, which is the largest city in Viet Nam, in terms of population and area, was not included in the report Therefore, in order to build

a good dataset on solid waste management, pertaining waste generation and composition, along with management practices, such as, transportation, landfilling, recycling, and composting; the present study is focused on Ho Chi Minh City

In this study, we quantified solid waste generation and analyzed its composition in order to propose appropriate methods of management Further to this, we analyzed gaps in regards to waste management regulation and economic policies, institutions arrangements, technologies and infrastructure, capacity building, participation of stakeholders, and financing mechanism Following this, we made analysis of SWOT that includes the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in the management of MSW Based on gaps and SWOT analyses, we proposed several recommendations to be incorporated in the action plans of Ho Chi Minh City for efficient management of the MSW

2 Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City, popularly also known as Saigon, is located in the transition zone between South-East and South-West of Viet Nam, consisting 24 districts (19 urban or sub urban and 5 rural) with a total area of 2,095,06 km² (Figure 1) The metropolitan area of Ho Chi Minh City is greater than Hanoi, the capital city of Viet Nam The City is a center of culture, economy and education It is the most populous city of Viet Nam with a population of 7.98 million comprising more than 8 percent of the country (Statistical Handbook of Viet Nam, 2014) Due to the

rapid urbanization, economic growth, and migration of people from other parts of the country, the population of Ho Chi Minh City is growing significantly Figure 2 shows the trend in the increase of population of Ho Chi Minh City from 1995 to 2014 In 1995, the population in Ho Chi Minh City was 4.64 million which increased to 9.98 million in

2014 The population increased by twofold in a period of less than 2 decades The trend shows about 0.19 million people are increasing in every year in Ho Chi Minh City (Figure 2), with partial contribution from the immigration

of people from other part of Viet Nam for jobs and livelihood The Government of Viet Nam’s projections indicate that the population of Ho Chi Minh City is expected to increase by 2.65% between 2016 and 2020

Fig 1.Location of Ho Chi Minh City (10.75 °N, 106.67 °E) in Viet Nam The map of Ho Chi Minh City, shown above, is taken from Van Buuren

and Potting (2011) Zone 1 and Zone 2 (indicated with stars) are two major sanitary landfill sites in Ho Chi Min City

3 Methodology

For this article, data on waste generation in Ho Chi Minh City was collected from the Division of Solid Waste Management (DOSWM) of the Department of Natural Resource and Management (DONRE), Ho Chi Minh City

As shown in Figure 1, there are two landfill sites in Ho Chi Minh City, namely, PhuocHiep (Zone 1) and Da Phuoc (Zone 2) These landfill sites are equipped with heavy duty truck weighing machines The weight of waste generated

in Ho Chi Minh City was determined by subtracting the weight of truck without-waste from the weight of truck with-waste

Segregation of waste into its different components, such as, decomposable or organic (e.g food waste) and recyclable (e.g metals, plastics, cans, etc.) was conducted at the selected collection sites, as well as at the landfill sites The recyclable waste was further processed, for example, crushing it into fine pieces and sent to the recycling company, while the organic waste was either sent to landfills or the composting facility

For gaps and SWOT analysis, critical review of existing rules and regulations and policy frameworks concerning the solid waste management has been conducted Discussions with officials of the DONRE were also conducted to obtain the knowledge about current practices of waste management and related policies, gaps and strengths and weakness in the policies and frameworks

4 Result and Discussions

4.1 Waste Generation

With increasing income due to the economic growth and changing of life styles of the people of Ho Chi Minh City, the generation of solid waste is also increasing proportionally with population growth (Figure 2 and 3) Table 1 illustrates the main sources of solid waste in Ho Chi Minh City These sources are domestic activities in the municipality, contributing about 6,800-7,000 tons/day, followed by the construction and demolition (500-800 tons/day), healthcare (20-25 tons/day), and hazardous (250-350 tons/day Adding up the maximum range of the solid waste of each source category given in Table 1, the total solid waste generated in Ho Chi Minh City is about 8,175 tons/day This has been contributed by 1.4 million households; 400 offices buildings, local markets, and supermarkets; 12,000 service providers, such as, hotels and restaurants; 15 industrial zones with various types of industries; and 134 hospitals and 600 healthcare centers Figure 3 shows the trend in the MSW generation in Ho Chi Minh City The trend shows that the quantity of MSW has been increasing steadily from 1992 to 2010 at the rate of

98338 tons/year In 1992, the quantity of MSW generated was approximately 425,000 tons/year, which has increased to approximately 2.4 million tons/year in 2010 This enhancement in the MSW generation can be attributed to increasing population

Table 1: Main sources of solid waste in Ho Chi Min City

Data source: DONRE, 2014

Fig 2.Trend of increasing population in Ho Chi Minh City from 1995-2014 (Source: General Statistics Office of Viet Nam,

Fig 3.Trend of MSW generation in Ho Chi Minh City from 1992-2010) (Source DONRE 2010) Dividing the total solid waste generated (i.e., 8.175 tons/day) in Ho Chi Minh City by its total population (i.e., 7,981,900), about 1.02 kg solid waste has been generated by each person per day The 1.02 kg/capita/day generation

of solid waste is higher than 0.61 kg/capita/day (country average) reported by UNEP 2004 for Viet Nam for 2001 In ASEAN countries, such as in Philippines, daily per capita generation of solid waste was 0.3 kg (rural) 0.5 kg (urban), in Lao PDR 0.75 kg, Malaysia 0.68 kg and Thailand 0.23 kg in 2001 (UNEP 2004) In the same report, Singapore was at the top in solid waste generation with a value of about 4.0 kg/capita/day

Table 2:Components MSW in percentage (wet weight basis) from households, schools, restaurants and hotels

4.2 Waste Characterization

Table 2illustrates the components of MSW in Ho Chi Minh City contributed from households, schools, and restaurants and hotels in percentage by wet-weight basis The Contribution of MSW from a particular source by less than 0.5 % is designated as negligible Food waste from the households, schools, and hotels and restaurants were the largest contributors to total MSW in Ho Chi Minh City, with contribution ranging from 61-96.6% from households, 23.5-75% from schools, and 79.5-100% from hotels and restaurants Contribution of MSW from these sources about other types of waste, such as, nylon, plastics, fabric, soft rubber, ebonite, wood, foam, paper, glass, metal, etc were minor or negligible(Table 2)

Fig 4 (a) Physical composition of MSW in dry weight basis (in percentage) in Ho Chi Min City (Source: DONRE 2009)

Fig 4 (b) Physical composition of MSW in wet weight basis (in percentage) in Ho Chi Min City (Source: DONRE 2009)

Figure 4 (a,b) shows the physical composition of MSW in Ho Chi Minh City, both dry weight and wet weight basis

in percentage As mentioned, the major components of MSW were contributed from different sources, such as, households, schools, restaurants and hotels (Table 2) As can be seen in Figure 4, food waste was the largest component in the MSW, both in dry 51% and wet 69% Other major components, in wet and dry basis, were plastic 16% and 25%, textile 5% and 7.2%, papers 3% and 4.2%, rubber and leather 1.1% and 2.3%, diapers 3% and 1.8%, and inorganic waste 1.9% and 5.2% The rest of the components less than 0.5% are designated or considered negligible Thus, based on the physical composition (Figure 4) analysis, the MSW of Ho Chi Minh City consists of 65-90% biodegradable waste or organic waste; 10-25% recyclable waste, such as, plastics, papers, metals; and remaining non-biodegradable waste

4.3 Current MSW Management Practices

Ideally, solid waste management should include reduction of waste generation, proper storage and collection, facilities of transport, adequate treatment and processing, and disposal in a way that it would be in accordance to the standards that encompass the best principles of health, economics, aesthetics, and environment conservations

Currently, in Ho Chi Minh City about 85% of MSW is mostly sanitary landfilled and the rest is used for composting (15% by volume) The landfilling has been done in two active landfill sites, namely, PhuocHiep (Zone 1) and Da Phuoc (Zone 2) (Figure 1),owned and operated by Vietnam Waste Solution, Inc (VWS) (http://vnwaste.com) Each landfill site receives approximately the same quantity of MSW Da Phuoc (128 hectare area) is located south of Ho Chi Minh City, and belongs to hamlet 1 and hamlet 2 Da Phuoc Commune and BinhChanh districts PhuocHiep sanitary landfill (100 hectare area) collects the waste from the remaining districts PhuocHiep landfill is located in the complex of the solid waste treatment and disposal under the management of PhuocHiep Commune, Cu Chi District, Ho Chi Minh City PhuocHiep landfill is located near residential areas PhuocHiep landfill has a weak ground base, as subsidence cases occur frequently

In Ho Chi Minh City, “household waste separation guidelines at source” have already been deployed in efforts

to reduce the waste going to landfill The Citenco (http://www.citenco.com.vn), a private company, deployed two teams to collect organic and inorganic waste, separately The inorganic waste is collected daily from 16:00 hours, while organic waste is collected from 17:00 hours to 20:00 hours on Wednesdays and Sundays To encourage the people in waste sorting according to organic and inorganic categories, which make efficient transfer of waste, the Citenco Company has started a process to convert inorganic waste to plastic recycling The company has started a pilot project in 2013 to encourage the people to segregate waste in Doc Lap Street, Tan Thanh ward, TanPhu district The results are encouraging and, many people have expressed their support As of March 2014, about 97%

of households were participating in sorting and transferring of the waste by their categories For sorting of waste, the households have been provided two types of bins (blue and gray), blue for organic and gray for the remaining waste Although it is in limited quantity, the sorted organic waste is currently being used for making the compost After sorting, the waste is transferred to a pilot treatment plant at Da Phuoc area for making the compost The mixed waste

is processed through several stages, such as, drying, crushing, separation of metals, and filtering out other inorganic waste (e.g plastic bags and plastic items) The remaining purely organic waste is used for composting It takes about 45 days for the entire process of composting and the fertilizer produced is suitable for the crops Roughly, from about 1 ton of mixed waste 600 kg compost is produced In 2012, about 500 tons/day organic waste was processed for composting Methane gas produced in sanitary landfills is used for generating electricity

Table 3:Types and quantities of waste bought by junkshops for recycling

Sl.

No. Types of waste

Quantity of recyclable waste bought by junkshops

(tons/month)

No. Types of waste

Quantity of recyclable waste bought by junkshops

(tons/month)

Table 3 illustrates the quality of waste in tons per month recycled in Ho Chi Minh City Paper and plastic were the largest types of waste recycled in the city with quantity of 3363.8 and 3794.2, respectively followed by metals including aluminum, iron, zinc, and lead with total of 1124.3 tons per month, although amount of lead is very small (0.1 tons/month) Among metals, more than about 1000 tons/month of iron is recycled Glass is also recycled in a significant amount (384.3 tons/month)

5 Gaps in MSW Management

5.1 Regulatory and Economic Policies

Due to the economic development, many industrial zones have been established inside and outside of Ho Chi Minh City Municipal and hazardous waste that the City is receiving comes not only from the city region but also from nearby provinces The economic development has attracted immigrants from other parts of Viet Nam to work

in Ho Chi Minh City and nearby provinces, causing a rapid population growth thus causing the solid waste to increase year-by-year The government has set policies and standards for the waste sectors However, due to limited involvement of stakeholders in the policy making process, the policies and standards in terms of the implementation and enforcement may need some improvement The guideline on household waste separation at the source to reduce the amount of waste to landfill is in need for improvement

5.2 Institutional Framework

Although the legal framework of solid waste management in Viet Nam has been enhanced, the laws have not yet been given clear responsibilities for any of the concerned authorities This has led to a situation where solid waste management is under control by multiple agencies with overlapping authority, thus resulting in solid waste being in need of improvement It is difficult to take into account the responsibility and accountability among the various authorities regarding the solid waste management (Viet et al., 2009) Under the control of national organizations, the institutional framework of SWM in Ho Chi Minh City is also in the same situation, which is quite complicated to operate

5.3 Technological and Infrastructure

Regarding technologies and infrastructure of SWM in Ho Chi Minh City, there are some limitations as well Currently, solid waste classification in Ho Chi Minh City has remained with limited resources due to the lack of advanced technology In addition, current technologies for MSW treatment in Ho Chi Minh City are mostly sanitary landfills and composting The high organic fraction of MSW creates problems for large-scale mechanical separation and mixed waste composting In terms of the recycling, since most of recycling facilities are small businesses, investment in recycling technology may not be affordable for such entities and thus may lead to low quality of recycled products The operating landfills are causing environmental problems Various landfill gases such as GHGs (e.g methane) and small amount of CO, N2, H2S, NH3 and others are released from the landfill sites (Sang et al., 2010) In addition, leachate is also one of the main problems of landfills Thus, Ho Chi Minh City needs to install environmentally sound technology (EST) from developed countries to manage its solid waste in a sustainable manner In terms of waste collection, this stage has been implemented by collection network with more than 18,000 workers using an outdated transport system For instance, the collection handcar is old and in a low hygienic condition These fleets need to be renewed for faster and better service In addition to this, the transfer stations are not sufficient enough to accommodate the waste, causing it to be in bad hygienic conditions leading to concerns of leachate, air and odor pollution Two categories of transfer stations do not have a vehicle washing system, air

pollution system and wastewater treatment system The existing landfills do not meet the needs of Ho Chi Minh City waste, as they always receive big volume of solid waste daily

5.4 Capacity Building

Capacity building is seen as an important concern in Viet Nam in solid waste management In MSW management of Ho Chi Minh City, the officers are lacking technical capacity and need to improve their skills on solid waste management This leads to the limited capacity and may affect solid waste management operation and implementation in an efficient and effective manner, as Ho Chi Minh City is too large to be controlled The lack of human resources, specifically, the lacking of expert and staff who have deep knowledge on solid waste management, is also a problem in Ho Chi Minh City The waste separation at the household source is not effective due to the lack of awareness of local people For a long-term solution, it would be advantageous to organize a campaign for the local people, to let them participate in solid waste management in their residential areas

5.5 Financial Mechanism

In the case of financial mechanism of Ho Chi Minh City, financial support for solid waste management comes from the city government whose process commonly has various limitations The administrative process in Viet Nam has several complications due to the many relevant authorities This situation may be the cause of the lack of funding or delayed funding for MSW management Hence, in its best interest, the city requires more investment and financial support from outside organizations

6 SWOT Analysis of Waste Management

The SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis is a tool to identify the positive and negative points of the performance of any process, organization, project, and company Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors while opportunities and threats are external factors We applied SWOT analysis on the MSW management of Ho Chi Minh City to prioritize the current issues on the MSW while enhancing the positive points and minimizing the negative ones in the future city strategies Table 4illustrated the SWOT analysis for Ho Chi Minh City MSW management

6.1 Strengths

The strength of the city is its strong private sectors, consisting of companies or business groups, which have a strong capacity to manage MSW by using the Environmentally Sound Technologies (EST) during the collection, transport, treatment, composting, and final disposal Ho Chi Minh City is the most developed city in Viet Nam The city attracts a large in-flow of immigrants from other provinces to live and work there Hence, the large number of manual labor could meet the demand of MSW management in the city Informal sectors play an important role in collection and recycling of waste

6.2 Weaknesses

The city certainly has various weaknesses which need to be addressed As mentioned in gap analysis, the complexity of the institutional framework may be a challenge for implementing sustainable SWM Due to the lack

of stakeholders’ participation in setting up of the regulation or standard, their ability to meet with standards will be low, especially private companies The limited capacity of environmental staff or experts is a disadvantage for the city In terms of the financial issue, limited support from the government is an issue when implementing any activities This issue is leading to poor infrastructure with lack of transportation stations as well as outdated transportation vehicles for waste collection and transportation operation Besides this, it also leads to weak environmental protection in the landfill which produces leachate and gas emissions The landfill design and operation are not efficient As well known, the private sectors play a very important role in SWM, however, they may not be involved in most of the programmes and activities The waste separation, that needs to be implemented

in households, is lacking at the moment

Table 4: SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of MSW management of in Ho Chi Minh City

Strengths Weaknesses

x Private sectors have strong capacity to manage MSW,

including collection, transport, treatment, and dispose of while

applying environmentally sound technologies

x Availability of strong human resources (including manual

labor) to meet the demand of MSW management

x Informal sectors plays important role in recycling of MSW

x Weak legal and institutional framework for solid waste management (SWM), especially implementation, monitoring and evaluation (M&E)

x Policy and standards do not meet ability of stakeholders (e.g private sectors)

x Lack of experts and staff who have technical knowledge and skills in SWM

x Lack of financial support from government

x Lack of technologies for SWM

x Poor infrastructure (e.g landfill design and operation is not efficient

x Weak environmental protection in landfills

x Does not take advantages of private sector role in SWM

x Lack of waste separation at source due to lack environmental awareness of local people

Opportunities Threats

x City location is good for attracting investment from outside

foreign and internal organizations

x Better engagement of private sectors in SWM by changing

economic structures and policies

x Being a biggest city, the national government has focused on

city development and MSW plan will be supported by the

government

x With high fraction of organic waste (65-90%) there are

opportunities and potential of converting waste to energy or

waste to compost

x Rapid economic growth and changing life style increased consumption of resources which in turn increasing waste generation

x Increasing population due to migration from other part of country resulting increased waste generation

x Harsh climate as a logistical constraint

6.3 Opportunities

Ho Chi Minh City is located in the center of the Southeast Asian Region, the place that has the fastest growth in the world and a market of more than 600 million people From Ho Chi Minh City, it is also a short distance to other promising nearby markets such as other ASEAN countries, China and India For example, Ho Chi Minh City is 1,700 km south of Hanoi, 297 km east of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 881 km east of Bangkok, Thailand For businesses, location is obviously crucial because a convenient and strategic location helps them to save a lot of money and time for transportation This would be the first opportunity for the city In addition to this, due to the significant role of the city for national economy, the national government is focused on city development Thereby, the MSW management plan could be supported from the government As for the specific opportunity of the waste management issue, with high percentage of organic waste (>70%), there is a potential of converting waste to energy and waste to compost

6.4 Threats

Lastly, the threats of city are also defined Since the city is the heart of all economic activities of Vietnam, it has attracted a large flow of immigrants from other provinces to live and work in the city, which is also the reason why MSW in the city is increasing More importantly, in the context of climate change, MSW management may also be effected For landfill, an effect of flooding is evident, which exacerbate to address the current issues as well as environmental problems of landfill (Hoang and Viet, 2011)