Representatives from the Da Nang Department of Natural Resources and the Environment along with those from the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Japan-based Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) on Monday discussed priority orientations for the action plan on plastic waste management in Da Nang by 2025.

It is known that, in 2019, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc issued a national action plan on ocean plastic waste management by 2030. Over recent years, Da Nang has been active in implementing highly practical plans and activities such as sorting waste at the source, reducing the use of plastic bags and disposable plastic products in business and service establishments and beach cleanup campaigns.

Da Nang government has agreed on the policy of participating in the landmark project ‘Closing the Loop: Scaling up Innovation to Tackle  Marine Plastic Pollution in ASEAN Cities’ sponsored by the Japanese government, ESCAP and IGES.

The participation in the project will help Da Nang monitor and manage plastic waste from the generated source in a more accurate and effective manner, and join forces with neighbouring localities towards a closed loop plastic waste management system.

Mr Akihiko Haga, Second Secretary at the Embassy of Japan in Viet Nam affirmed that Japan is willing to give technological support to Da Nang so that the latter can effectively implement the action plan of plastic waste management, and hoped that the central Vietnamese city would actively participate in the project.

Meanwhile, experts and managers from ESCAP and IGES discussed methods of assessing and quantifying plastic waste emissions into the environment, and monitoring plastic waste pollution. They also proposed strategies, goals and priorities for Da Nang's action plan on plastic waste managementby 2025, with a vision to 2030.

It is known that Da Nang has set a target of collecting 95% of solid waste for treatment over the 2019 – 2025 period, with 12% and 15% to be recycled and reused in 2020 and 2025 respectively.

By 2025, Da Nang will have implemented the sorting of domestic solid waste at families, and 100% of industrial parks and production facilities, service providers, and government agencies and organisations will have classified waste at the source.

According to ESCAP’s official web, South East Asian countries contribute to over half of land-based sources of marine plastic pollution globally. Fast growing cities with underdeveloped waste management systems in South East Asia are responsible for as much as 60% of plastic waste leakage into the environment, with 75% of land-based sources of marine plastic pollution coming from uncollected waste and 25% comes from leakages in the municipal waste management systems. Plastic pollution is also trans boundary — up to 95% of plastic in our ocean is transported by ten major rivers, eight of which are in Asia.

By NAM TRAN, DIEM HANG-Translated by A.T