Danang Waste Solutions Mapping
Stories and insights from the field
Solution Capture Card
Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2019
Khue Trung, Danang
A makeshift scrap collection station
UNDP Accelerator Lab Vietnam
A station for informal waste picker to collect valuable scraps from household to sell. Save the time and energy for them to go to each house. Allowing households call them when needed
A styrofoam box with a sign “Buy valuable scraps” and a phone number
Solution Capture Card
Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2019
Khue Trung, Danang
Makeshift trash/bins infront of households
UNDP Vietnam
Most households have a makeshift bin in front of their house where daily waste are discarded. Danang Urban Environment Company (DUEC) workers come to collect them on a daily basis with a cart or truck. Informal waste pickers (IWP) sometime go through these bins for valuable scraps. Some household sort valuable scraps separately to ease IWP job. For comparison, households in Hanoi ,the capital, doesn’t have this practice, and the street tends to be dirtier with litter as a result.
Solution Capture Card
Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2019
Khue Trung, Danang
Existing waste sorting initiative from government
UNDP Accelerator Lab Vietnam
The Danang government is rolling out waste sorting pilot on household level. Giving households waste sorting bag and training.
Another observations from households visit was that most houses don’t like to keep sorted waste for long, either because they don’t have space inside the house for sorting or didn’t want to make space for storing waste. Vietnam is quite humid and stored waste tends to smell bad quickly and breed vermins. The daily waste are thrown out on a daily basis for DUEC or IWP to take away.
My husband just brought these sorted bag from the ward waste sorting training. But we haven’t had much waste to put in this yet. Whenever waste collector drop by we just give them these bags to be emptied on a daily basis. We don’t like to keep any waste in house as it breeds vermin.
Solution Capture Card
Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2019
Danang
DUEC Waste bins with local business
UNDP Vietnam
THe Danang Urban Environment Company is contracted by local business to provide waste collection services and these waste bins. Typically a business pay a fix amount each month to have their waste collected by DUEC. These bins are unsorted, During holiday or peak tourist season, DUEC worker struggle to collect these bins on time and waste start to piles up.
I’ve a contract with DUEC for waste collection. I’ve brought 3 bins from them to store our waste. They come almost every day to collect. But in high tourist season, like summer, we have a lot of waste that go uncollected for a few days. Then I need to call and beg them to come. But I’m a paying customer, so it isn’t right that I’ve to do that. - A restaurant owner shared
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Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2019
Hai Chau, Danang
DUEC trash collection gathering point
UNDP Vietnam
Households and business trashes are brought to a collection point to be compressed by these mechanical trucks. Then transported to Khanh Son landfill.
When asked about the waste sorting pilot ongoing in Hai Chau, our interviewee said that he has heard about it, but doesn’t know the details of it yet. His management hasn’t shared how his team will collect the sorted waste. In the past, there was a initiative from the woman association to sort and collect waste. It was then stopped, maybe because it wasn’t very effective. Sorted waste still ended up going into the same truck, as the truck doesn’t have separating compartment.
I work 8 hours each day starting from 7AM. Sometime over lunch. We collect waste from this collection point to landfill. Each ward has a collection point, our colleagues bring us waste from households and businesses through a cart.
Solution Capture Card
Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2018
Danang
DUEC workers in the field
According to Danang newspaper report, DUEC is facing great challenges with manpower and outdated equipment. DUEC employs 280 workers to clean and collect trash from the street. It is estimated that 60% of household trash are found in small alleyways making collection difficult. Workers are typically paid about 9$ a day, covering 40km/day to collect about 5 tonnes/day under hard physical and dirty conditions. High turnover rate is common. Only 30% of waste collection is mechanized, rest is done via manual labour.
Solution Capture Card
Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2019
Hai Chau, Danang
Informal waste picker home
UNDP Vietnam
Informal waste picker often go in bicycle, which are environmental friendly means of getting around and collecting valuable waste. They typically collect waste that are convenient and clean to carry that sell for high price. Aluminium cans are the most valuable selling for 20,000 VND a kg, followed by metal, cardboards and plastics which go for around 4,000VND/kg. IWP typically work other jobs as well like house-cleaning, and other manual jobs to supplement their income. They earn about 5-10$ a day, don’t have health insurance and often bring a lot of waste home for sorting.
I often get called by restaurants or coffee shop to collect scraps for them. I work from the morning collecting mostly aluminum cans and bottles. Then I bring these home for sorting. In the evening, I take these scraps to sell to the scrap stores.
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Reported by
2019
Hai Chau, Danang
A typical scrap shop/store
UNDP Vietnam
These are scrap stores that is in the business of selling and buying recycled waste. IWP, most often women, collect valuable scraps around the city and bring them home for sorting. Then they bring to these shop to be weighed and sold. These shops will then sell the scaps to other middlemen and businesses that use these materials for manufacturing or construction.
Solution Capture Card
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Reported by
2019
Danang
Reform project from Evergreen Lab
UNDP Vietnam
A local social impact business using low grade plastic waste to upcycle into building materials and furniture. They can take low grade plastic (e.g: single-use plastic bags, wraps, styrofoam etc…) processing it into plastic flakes and mix it with some other ingredients (aluminium,glass powder…) through heat press to create strong composite materials for construction materials (tiles) or furniture (tables, lockers…). Single-use/low grade plastic pollution is a huge problem in Danang as there isn’t much of a market for it with traditional recycling industry. This solution could help to showcase a circular economy model for low-grade plastic.
Solution Capture Card
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Reported by
2019
Danang
DUEC task force to collect valuable waste in Hai Chau 1
UNDP Vietnam
Hai Chau 1, a ward in Hai Chau District - Central area of Da Nang, is the first location to pilot the City’s waste sorting strategy. The ward decided that it will promote waste sorting by centralizing the recyclable waste collection services. 2 DUEC workers are hired to go through all househouses in the ward twice a week (Wednesday and Monday) and collect valuable waste from these households.
They renovate the normal trash collection trolley into new recycle collection trolley to be more friendly with citizens. They also recorded their “call for action” and play it while going through households to urge citizens to give valuable waste.
After the valuable wastes are collected, UDEC staff will take them to the collection point and store them in appropriate sections before selling them out.
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Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2019
Danang
Vice Chairman of Hai Chau 1 talking about the citizen engagement app
UNDP Vietnam
District Hai Chau has built an app to engage citizen in urban management issues, including but not exclusive to waste issues.
For example, if there is wrong throwing of trash (ex: big pile of construction trash in wrong positions, sometimes in front of residential houses), citizens can spot it, take picture and post it up on the app to demand prompt solutions from the district and ward management.
All problems have maximum 4 hours (automatically set by the app) to solve. This put a lot of pressure on ward and district management. Besides this app, there is also a Zalo group for ward and district management level to communicate and delegate task to solve citizens’ pointed problems.
Solution Capture Card
Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2019
Danang
Plastic bottle collection point in Hai Chau and Hoa Cuong Nam’s ward centers
UNDP Vietnam
In both of the piloting wards (Hai Chau 1 and Hoa Cuong Nam), there are plastic bottle collection cages at the ward centers. These are supposedly for guests coming in to throw their plastic bottle/trash here and also serve as models for plastic waste sorting behaviors. However, it seems that not much plastic is being thrown inside.
Solution Capture Card
Observation/ Quotes (s)
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Reported by
2019
Danang
Promotional banners in public
UNDP Vietnam
These are promotional materials for waste sorting.
It seems that these are still not that effective because they jump into solutions right away (please sort waste) rather than raising awareness about problems (which many citizens were complaining about)