Shortly after arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam to study abroad for a semester I began to notice the plethora of men digging through garbage cans in parks to pull out bottles, cans, and other recyclable materials. Two months later, and my curiosity has only grown. For this reason I chose to write a research paper for my Environmental Sustainability in Vietnam class on these men, and their effects on the developing recycling system in Vietnam.
In order to gain more insight into the recycling system, I have been looking at scholarly publicans on Vietnam’s waste production and the current state of the recycling system. What I have learned so far is that waste (both recyclable and not) is growing at a faster rate than Vietnam’s formal waste management systems. For this reason the role of the men digging through garbage cans, or Informal Recycling System (IRS) as I refer to them, play an incredibly beneficial role. Another way that I am conducting research is by sitting in parks and watching the men (I use the word “men” as opposed to “people” for I have only seen men performing this work so far) gather recyclables. I have been noting their method of acquiring waste and noticed two main systems: digging through garbage cans, and asking patrons of the park for their cans, bottles, and papers.
The park where I have been conducting my observations.
Based on what I have observed the IRS plays a larger role than I imagined, with an average of one member of the IRS circulating the park every 10 minutes. While recyclables are certainly present in locations other than parks, it appears that 100% of recyclable waste is being collected by the IRS in order to be sold to recycling centers. I have visited 3 such recycling centers so far, but have not been able to go to the next rung in the supply chain latter of processing plants. In order to continue my research I plan to visit more parks to see if they have as high of a collection rate as look into the next steps in the supply chain of recycling getting from consumer to recycling plant.