Hoi An residents turn organic waste into compost and detergent
While cycling for exercise every early morning, Nguyen Thi Hong Van often passes a market to collect
By Cong Thanh
Chef Phạm Toi from the Field restaurant in Hoi An ancient town in central Quảng Nam Province designed a “zero waste” party for food-lovers, with salad, steak, and rice all appearing on the one plate.
The shared plate will limit any leftover food while cutting down the number of plates needing water to be washedand the number of wait staff required to serve customers.
This is one of a series of “zero waste” efforts that travel agencies and accommodation providers in the tourism hub have pursued since 2011 in promoting the “3Rs” (reduce, reuse and recycle) as well as a plastic waste reduction campaign.
“We save water and cut kitchen waste and leftover food,” he says. “Most organic kitchen waste and resort waste is either composted or made into dishwashing liquid. Environmentally-friendly packaging and glass bottles are also alternative options for tourists.”
The Field restaurant reduces its daily waste by 10 to 15 kg after recycling organic kitchen waste, and produces 30 kg of materials for chemical-free dishwashing liquid each month.
Vũ Thị Mỹ Hạnh, manager of An Nhien Farm, says each member of her six-farmer team helps recycle 50 kg of garden waste each day into useable and environmentally-safe bio products, including compost and cleaning detergent.
“Hundreds of litres of used cooking oil are used to produce chemical-free soap, while unused single-use soap bars are recycled into new bars,” Hạnh says. “Leaves in gardens or at public sites can be fermented for bio-fertiliser production.”
Refillable Hoi An, the first refillable concept store in the ancient town, helps local residents refill more than 10,000 containers instead of sending them off to landfill.
Promoting the use of glass bottles will help a 100-room hotel save 20,000 plastic bottles and 17 kg of single-use plastic each day.
She says Hoi An should apply a set of principles — refuse, reduce, recycle, refill, re-use, classify, seek alternatives, reform, and use glass bottles — in becoming the first “zero waste” site in Viet Nam.
Many craft workshops in the ancient town have been producing straws, containers, and souvenirs from bamboo and reeds to eliminate single-use plastics, while housewives have been encouraged to bring reusable bags to markets instead of taking a plastic bag from vendors.
Phan Xuan Thanh, chairman of the Quảng Nam Tourism Association, says 44 hotels, homestays, villas, restaurants, and travel agencies in Hoi An have begun building the “Zero plastic waste tourism” brand and 100 “green” businesses will emerge by 2023.
Poor treatment
Hoi An and the Cham Islands — two popular destinations in central Viet Nam — have yet to build effective waste treatment plants, while incinerators operate poorly and emit fumes that may be hazardous.
According to the Cham Islands’ Marine Protected Area management board, the islands’ population of 2,200 people release between three and three and a half tonnes of waste each day, with most being burned or sent to landfill.
Nguyễn Thanh Sơn from Hoi An’s urban and environment company says the city produces 120 tonnes of garbage each day, of which 30 per cent is from tourists, but poor waste treatment has left its major rubbish dump, Cẩm Ha, overloaded and polluted.
Vice chairman of the Hoi An people’s committee, Nguyễn Minh Lý, says the city will develop a waste recycling network that turns garbage into new products and limits dumping.
It plans to be a “zero single-use plastic waste” and “green” city by 2025.
The Cham Islands, 20 km off the coast of Hoi An, is the first site in Viet Nam to promote the successful reduction of plastic bags and push the “3Rs” campaign, since 2011.
Local residents and tourists have been told not to use plastic bags, and the “say no to single-use plastic straws and cups” campaign was launched in 2019.
Trần Văn Đuc, an islander, says the reduction in plastic bags has helped create a clean and green environment that helps increase eco-tourism services.
“Islanders have been encouraged to recycle bags or paper packaging, with leaves used at the local market instead of bags,” Đuc says.
Residents in Hoi An have also been building chemical-free fertiliser and zero-waste agro-tourism garden zones, including in Cẩm Kim, An Mỹ, and Triem Tay villages along with the popular Tra Quế vegetable village.
Cẩm Thanh Commune in Hoi An and Tan Hiep Commune on the Cham Islands were selected as locations for the launch of a zero-waste model, promoting waste classification and recycling in the community as well as plastic waste reduction and composting.
With total funding of more than US$90,000 from USAID’s municipal waste recycling programme via the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), the project will help residents in the two communes reduce the waste they release by 75 to 80 per cent.
“Recycling, composting, and waste classification at the source before disposal are possible solutions for Hoi An and the Cham Islands,” says Quach Thị Xuan, a co-ordinator with the Viet Nam Zero Waste Alliance.
Initial effort
Jan Zellmann from Ever Green Lab established the ReForm Facility in Hoi An to handle plastic waste from the city itself and from the Cham Islands.
“We began bringing plastic back from the Cham Islands last September and are collecting plastic from the Hoi An waste processing site,” he says.
“During the trial period, in 2020, we converted 25,000 kg of plastic into boards and products.”
“We produce different types of boards and will introduce our own furniture catalogue in January. ReForm receives a few orders a day at the moment. We are producing rubbish bins for Ha Noi and Hoi An from waste, which is good from an educational perspective.”
The ReForm facility, at full capacity, can treat around 1,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year.
“In Hoi An, plastic represents 16 per cent of daily waste and half of this is high-value plastic,” he says. “We focus on low-value plastic and could process around 50 per cent when at full capacity if recovery and sorting was improved. We currently have to extract the plastic from mixed waste, which is labour-intensive, but we still collect between two and three tonnes a day.”
Half of all plastic waste in Hoi An, he says, can be considered valuable and tradable, while the remainder is of low or no value.
Hoi An and the Cham Islands have been receiving support and cooperation from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in helping the two communes become the first successful “zero waste” locations in Viet Nam. VNS
