HCM City now has nearly 800 waste recycling businesses but many of them are small and use outdated technology, causing serious environmental pollution, according to the HCMC Waste Recycling Fund (Refu).

Le Van Khoa, director of Refu, told the Daily at a press conference on HCMC’s Fourth Recycling Day in 2011 that was held here on Monday that almost all the waste recyclers in the city do not meet the standards, except for one in Binh Chanh and another in Cu Chi District.

“The waste recycling technology in HCMC has not undergone upgrades in the past four years,” said Khoa.

He said it was hard for the companies to improve their technology while they were receiving scant incentives, especially those involving capital, tax and land, for revamping their production.

Khoa said the heavy tax on production of plastic bags, at up to VND50,000 per kg, would be applied when the law on environmental protection tax came into force early next year. However, the city has just four producers of self-decomposing bags.

These four enterprises are having difficulty finding outlets for their recycled products. To make matters worse, there are no national standards for bio-bags. The city discharges 30 tons of plastic bags a day at the moment.

The city government is planning to develop a huge waste recycling complex on 100 hectares in the outlying district of Cu Chi, but land clearance for the project is not yet complete, Khoa said.

As for financial support for garbage recycling businesses, he said, Refu has VND10 billion available but this was much smaller than the actual amount needed for a technology overhaul at the recyclers.

Back to the Fourth Recycling Day, which is slated to open on April 17 at the Labor Cultural House in District 1, the city’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment said the goal of the event is to call for workers at industrial parks and export processing zones around the city to collect waste and use bio-bags.

The department will also set up 104 sites around the city to collect harmful garbage such as used batteries, lamps, accumulators and chemical cans. Last year, the recycling day helped to collect over two tons of harmful waste.

Sixteen environment and packaging businesses in the city will be joining the forthcoming recycling event.

Source: SGT