Each year, Vietnam generates 15 million tonnes of waste. In urban areas it is around 34,500 tonnes per day. Industrial waste is around 3.2 million. The capital and the Hồng River Delta have reached a critical point. Most waste goes to landfills, polluting groundwater.
Hanoi (AsiaNews) – Australian and Vietnamese experts are working together on a project to improve water quality in some heavily polluted regions of the Asian nation.
Backed by the Australian government, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and its Vietnamese partners have developed the ‘Clean Water and Technology 4.0’ plan, which has been implemented so far in Hanoi and the Hồng (Red) River Delta.
Cooperation has led to improved designs for water filtration systems increasing access to clean drinking water for households and communities in Hà Nam province and the capital, Hanoi.
This is the case for at least 300 families and three public facilities, including a kindergarten in Phương Tú commune in Hanoi’s Ứng Hòa district.
Thanks to the water filtering system, more than 800 children at the kindergarten are not at risk of polluted water and waterborne diseases.
“We are very happy because now our school has drinking water, essential for guaranteeing the hygiene of children and teachers,” said the school principal, Ms Nhung. “The parents of our students feel much better now in sending their children to school.”
Water filtering systems are a top issue in a country with a high level of water and environmental pollution, particularly in urban areas and large cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
This problem affects adults, including seniors, but in even more so children who are among its first victims.
Some of the areas of greatest concern are Hanoi’s Hng Hòa district, and some provinces in the Hồng River Delta, where ground water contains highly toxic substances, including arsenic.
For daily use, people have to filter the water in a traditional way, boil it and then bottled before it can be drunk at home, but this is not always effective.
For Dũng Nguyễn, director of the Institute of Urban Environment and Industry of Vietnam, the problem is due to the huge production of solid waste.
Vietnam’s “total amount of solid waste produced annually is around 15 million tonnes’ he said. “Municipal waste is about 34,500 tonnes per day. Industrial waste is about 3.2 million tonnes per year. The annual increase of waste is 10 to 12 per cent.”
Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City alone generate 7,000 to 8,000 tonnes per day, with about 80 per cent ending up in a landfill.
This has increased the contamination of ground water, and affects at least a million people living in the Hồng River Delta, which runs through the capital towards the South China Sea.
This is why the Vietnamese seem very eager to see their own scientists work with experts from Australia to benefit local residents – students, workers, farmers – and thus reduce the mortality rate linked to diseases caused by groundwater pollution.