Municipal Solid Waste Management in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, Current Practices and Future Recommendation

Management of solid waste, including the municipal solid waste (MSW), is a major challenge in urban regions of most part of the world, including Southeast Asia. Due to the lack of effective management programs, regulations, and policies; the waste is causing severe health hazard including several communicable diseases, bad odors, nuisance, and environmental impacts, such as, contamination of water, soil, and air. Most Southeast Asian cities are lacking efficient MSW management programs. Thus, in order to contribute to building a good dataset on MSW for the Southeast Asian region, we quantified solid waste generation and analyzed waste composition for Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh City is a major urban region of Viet Nam in Southeast Asia. In Ho Chi Minh City, about 8,175 tons of solid waste was generated per day in 2014, consisting 6,800-7,000 of MSW, with 1.02 kg/capita/day generation of waste. The trend in MSW generation from 1992-2010 showed that 98,338 tons of MSW has been increasing every year. The MSW of Ho Chi Minh City contains 65-90% biodegradable matter. The major portion of MSW was food waste from 1.4 million households, 1,837 schools, and 12,000 hotels and restaurants. The current common practice of solid waste management in Ho Chi Minh City is landfilling. About 86% of the total solid waste was landfilled at two major landfill sites (PhuocHiep and Da Phuoc), and the rest 14% waste was recycled. Paper, plastic, metals, glass were the major waste being recycled with a quantity of 3364, 3794, 1124, and 384 tons/month, respectively. Further to support the MSW planning in Ho Chi Minh City, we analyzed gaps and SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) and provided recommendations to be incorporated in the action plans for efficient management of solid waste in Ho Chi Minh City.