There are still difficulties in implementing EPR.

On the afternoon of June 19, in Ho Chi Minh City, the Vietnam Business Council for Sustainable Development (under the Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry) coordinated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment to organize a workshop to disseminate regulations on product and packaging recycling responsibilities and waste collection and treatment responsibilities of manufacturers and importers (EPR).

At the workshop, Mr. Vo Tan Thanh, Vice President of the Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry, said that in Vietnam, EPR was officially introduced into the legal system through the Law on Environmental Protection in 2020. However, the implementation process still faces many difficulties such as incomplete collection and recycling infrastructure, weak official system, difficult to manage informal system; high recycling costs, difficult to consume recycled materials domestically; unclear legal guidelines make businesses confused in choosing the form of implementation; lack of monitoring mechanism, limited enforcement and communication capacity.

Organizing committee representatives share information at the workshop. Photo: MINH HAI

From the perspective of manufacturing enterprises, Ms. Pham Truc Thanh, Director of Sustainable Development of Heineken Vietnam Company, said that EPR is an important policy in promoting the circular economy . However, the company recognizes that there are still many challenges as Vietnam still lacks effective collection infrastructure and advanced, high-quality recycling technology. This requires synchronous coordination in building EPR policies - to increase collection rates, reduce resource loss and promote closed-loop recycling.

Mr. Le Anh, Director of Sustainable Development, Duy Tan Plastic Recycling Joint Stock Company also said that Duy Tan Recycling is the first enterprise in Vietnam to apply the recycling technology from the Republic of Austria "Bottle-Bottle" (bottle to bottle), which means using old plastic bottles to recycle into plastic granules to make raw materials to produce new plastic bottles. The current processing capacity is 60,000 tons/year. The biggest difficulty the company is facing is that the classification of waste at the source in Vietnam is not effective, which causes the company to spend more money to carry out the waste classification stage before recycling.

Mr. Le Anh, Director of Sustainable Development, Duy Tan Recycled Plastics Joint Stock Company shared information at the workshop. Photo: MINH HAI

Acknowledging the opinions of the units, Mr. Nguyen Tien Huy, Director of the Office of Enterprises for Sustainable Development, said that after the program, as a member of the drafting committee and editorial team to build the decree on EPR, the office will synthesize the comments received at the workshop to coordinate with the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment to complete the draft of the new Decree. At the same time, actively organize more practical activities to communicate, train to improve capacity, implement EPR, reduce carbon emissions, deploy the circular economic model in the business community, thereby supporting the business community to practice sustainable business more effectively.

MINH HAI

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/van-con-nhung-kho-khan-khi-thuc-hien-epr-post800122.html