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As already announced, the Vietnamese government is planning to eradicate plastic import by 2025. The government is also making plans and implementing it and it is clearly mentioned in VN Express a year back itself that Vietnam will not import plastic scrap from 2025. Vietnam is making efforts to reduce plastic waste. The whole country has aimed to ban single-use plastic products and attains to sell no disposable plastics at supermarkets by 2021.
Excess Plastic Import from US
Vietnam is considered to be the sixth-largest plastic scrap importer of the US. The country has imported 4.7 million tons of plastic scrap for 6.8 billion U.S. dollars till October 2019. There is a 2 % increase in scrap imports every year. In 2020, within six months of the span from January to June, the country has spent over 3.2 billion U.S. dollars on importing plastic products, which is a 5.4 percent increase from the same period last year, according to the ministry. The largest importers of Plastic Scrap to Vietnam also include China, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia.
Marine Waste Plastic Leakage
Five Southeast Asian countries are leaking more marine plastic waste than the rest of the world - Vietnam is one of them. As the Mekong River plays an important role in economic growth, It is also one of the 10 most effective sources of marine debris worldwide. The poor national waste management and due to rising consumption are the main reasons behind Vietnamese land-based marine debris. With the rapid economic growth of Vietnam over the past decades, the country’s solid waste production has also increased at an annual rate of about 10%. Only about 10-15% of the waste collected in Vietnam is recycled or recycled; Most of the rest is sent to dump sites and incineration facilities.
Efforts Taken by the Vietnamese Government to Ban Plastic
Vietnam is making efforts to reduce plastic waste. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Juan Fuq said in a national anti-plastic waste campaign in June 2019 that the entire country would ban single-use plastics by 2025 and that by 2021 there would be no sale of disposable plastics in supermarkets. Nearly 21,600 recycling containers were sitting in the Vietnamese ports, and nearly half were sitting for three months according to an article released last year. To move containers that remain stuck, the government instructed the Ministry of Environment to issue environmental protection certificates for qualified containers so that their importers can use them to manufacture products. Thus the government has decided to work on the backlogs.
Vietnam as Pilot City of Zero Plastic Waste
The Zero Plastic Waste City project was launched as a collaboration between the Grameen Creative Lab and the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. The project focuses on a community business-driven approach. The Zero Plastic Waste City Project aims to develop and deploy waste management solutions in the city, and to help local communities take ownership of these waste management systems and reap the benefits of them. Tan An is an important economic area in South Vietnam and located in the Mekong Delta - making it an ideal candidate for facilitating socio-economic development and protecting one of Vietnam's major waterways. The whole idea is about collecting the Waste, sorted into various categories, and convert into recyclable plastic. This resource can be used by local communities as a source of income.