Environmental waste: A woman pushes her bicycle carrying collected scrap to be recycled in Hanoi. In Vietnam, the lower cost of importing glass cullets from China is primarily driven by the higher cost of domestically recycled glass cullets. — AFP
HO CHI MINH CITY: A holistic approach is key to developing solutions that can drive change in glass recycling in Vietnam and the Asean region, experts suggest.
According to the Glass Packaging Institute, glass is a crucial part of industry, as it makes up the largest proportion of the primary packaging material.
The greatest benefit of glass packaging is that it is 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly without a loss in its quality or purity of it.
This makes it an ideal candidate for a circular economy, it stressed.
Glass can be made from readily available raw materials such as sand, soda ash and limestone as well as cullet.
Cullet is the term for glass which has been recycled and is ready for the furnace.
Cullet can be substituted for up to 95% of the raw materials used to make glass.
Through glass recycling, manufacturers benefit through energy savings and a reduction in the consumption of raw materials and carbon emissions, it said.
However, despite these benefits, glass recycling rates in most Asean countries remain low compared to other materials and regions, leading to a dependency on glass imports.
A latest report entitled 2024 Sustainability Report in Vietnam released by the Asia Pacific International Spirits and Wines Alliance (Apiswa), which includes a section deep-diving into glass recycling and circularity, revealed that recycling rates in regional countries are estimated to be 14% in Singapore, 10% in Malaysia and 15% in Vietnam.
The rates in the European Union and the United States, meanwhile, stand at 74% and 33%.
In Vietnam for example, it added, the lower cost of importing glass cullets from China is primarily driven by the higher cost of domestically recycled glass cullets.
The infrastructure for sorting, collecting, and recycling glass bottles in Vietnam remains largely underdeveloped.
This is despite the significant demand from glass manufacturing businesses for recycled glass as a raw material in the region. The determining factor remains low collection rates of glass to be reused into recycled glass content, the report said.
“More can be done to recognise the specific challenges faced by stakeholders across the value chain in Vietnam – from individual scrap pickers to scrap businesses and glass producers, as well as consumers,” it said.
Bayard Sinnema, commercial director for Asia of glass bottle manufacturer O-I, said: “The glass market in Vietnam is around 220,000 tonnes, which represents a significant opportunity to build scalable, sustainable infrastructure that could benefit all stakeholders.
“The industry can lead in efforts to educate the glass waste ecosystem on the value of diverting glass from landfills.
“By showing the opportunities and value in recycling glass, it will be able to attract more investment for building better infrastructure.”
Cognisant of the need to do more to address post-consumer waste, governments in Asean member states have also begun introducing regulations on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), requiring manufacturers and importers to contribute to national efforts to increase household recycling rates of materials like polyethylene terephthalate plastics, aluminium cans and glass.
While the management of waste post-consumption is the responsibility of government bodies and its related national and local level administrators, EPR schemes extend the responsibility of end-of-life packaging management to producers as well.
Waste collection and treatment responsibilities for manufacturers and importers were first introduced in Vietnam under the Law on Environment Protection (LEP) in 2005 and 2014.
In 2020, the LEP for the first time introduced comprehensive provisions for an EPR scheme.
The scope of the LEP includes glass packaging.
With the launching, Vietnam is among the first countries in South-East Asia to introduce EPR.
“Along with supporting the government’s efforts in protecting the environment and encouraging recycling in order to foster the growth of Vietnam’s green and circular economies, businesses hope suitable policies will be issued that correspond with the current environment in Vietnam, motivating manufacturers and recyclers to move toward sustainable development,” shared Chu Thi Van Anh, vice-president, general secretary of the Vietnam Beverage Association.
Cooperation between parties is needed to have better glass recycling.
Thong Q Ho, lecturer and research fellow, economy and environment partnership for South-East Asia, said: “A single policy is not sufficient for a complex issue, a combination of legal and market-based instruments, as well as working with industry associations to provide public education, known as a behavioural initiative, on glass recycling should be a good option.
“The EPR scheme is an opportunity for producers to share responsibility with the government and society for sustainable development.
“This involves implementing pilot programmes to assist waste collectors, businesses and households in lowering the costs of recycling glass or establishing sufficient economic incentives for the glass recycling market.
“Creating a recycling market for glass waste also contributes to making the glass industry more sustainable by reducing energy consumption and reliance on raw materials,” he said.
In fact, many co-operations have been done across many economic sectors.
For instance, Apiswa member companies have invested in solutions that aim to decrease carbon emissions from packaging and encourage circularity and returnability in the supply chain.
In Vietnam, Apiswa also worked with the Economy and Environment Partnership for South-East Asia to study current post-consumer glass waste pathways and value chain. — Viet Nam News/ANN
