A special draft project has been unveiled by the Vietnamese Government that will monitor the waste and pollutants coming out of 28 major industrial producers.
These include paper mills using imported recycled content, including from the UK, and an energy from waste facility.
Although the producers have not necessarily committed environmental pollution, the project will monitor industrial facilities that it thinks could commit pollution.
Facilities on the list include the An Hoa Pulp and Paper Mill in Tuyen Quang Province, Vietnam Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing in Hau Giang province and the Nam Son Waste Treatment Complex (energy from waste facility) in Hanoi.
Hoang Van Thuc, deputy head of the Vietnam Environment Administration, said the Vietnam Ministry of Natural Resource and Environment had selected 16 types of producers at high risk of polluting the environment.
They encompass metallurgy, thermo-electricity, mining and the processing of metallic minerals using toxic chemicals, paper-pulp production, fabric and yarn dyeing, plating, latex processing, cassava processing, cement production, chemical and pesticide fertiliser production, petrochemical, leather tanning, seafood processing, sugarcane processing, battery manufacture and waste treatment.
Since China has restricted imports of most plastics apart from post-manufacturing material and also banned mixed paper, Vietnam has increasingly been seen as a destination for recyclate.
Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry legal department director Dau Anh Tuan said producers would only be named if the threat was scientifically based.
Tuan added that the assessment should include criteria on how producers had followed regulations on environmental protection in the past.
“This will provide motivation for producers to actively obey regulations to avoid being added to the strict-supervision list,” he said.
Comments are now being sought from Vietnamese industry with the project then being presented to the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc for approval.
