E-waste in Vietnam

The ongoing IT revolution has improved people’s lives in many ways. Electronic products have become part and partial of our everyday life. Because of economic growth and technological advances, it's often cheaper and convenient to buy a new electronic product than to upgrade an old one. Growing dependence on electronic products has given rise to a new environmental challenge, e-waste.

Currently, e-waste is one of the fastest growing segments of waste stream in Asia and the Pacific as in the other parts of the world. Vietnam is one of the developing countries in Asia. So Vietnam is not an exception.

E-waste categories in Vietnam: There is no accepted definition of e-waste in Vietnam. Broadly, e-waste has been defined as a waste from relatively expensive and essentially durable products used for data processing, telecommunications or entertainment in private households and businesses. The range of these products is given below:

• Television set

• Computer

• Mobile phone

• Refrigerator

• Air conditioner

• Washing machine

• Battery

• Printer

• Fax machine

• Telephone

• Microwave oven

• Radio

• VCR

• DVD player

• CD player

• ...

Electronic equipment is a large contributor of heavy metals and organic pollutants to the waste stream. Some electronic products – usually those with cathode ray tubes (CRTs), circuit boards, batteries and mercury switches – contain hazardous or toxic materials such as lead, mercury, URENCO Report for the Development of E-waste Inventory in Vietnam URENCO urban environmental company limited 111 cadmium, chromium and flame-retardants. The glass screens or CRTs in computer monitors and televisions can contain as much as 27 percent lead. Electronic products containing these hazardous materials may pose an environmental risk if they are not properly managed at their end-of-life.

E-waste has three primary characteristics:

• E-waste is partly very valuable – end of life motherboards for instance may well sell for more than 800 US$ per ton to recyclers who recover metals.

• E-waste is partly very hazardous - e-waste contains over 1'000 different substances, some of which are toxic, and can pose serious risks and create severe pollution upon wrong handling and disposal.

• E-waste is increasing at alarming rates — Due to the fast evolution of e-technologies high rates of obsolescence occur. Combined with an explosion of new applications, e-waste produces high volumes of waste which increase globally very rapidly.

E-waste contains a number of toxic substances such as lead and cadmium in circuit boards; lead oxide and cadmium in monitor cathode ray tubes (CRTs); mercury in switches and flat screen monitors; cadmium in computer batteries; polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in older capacitors and transformers; and brominated flame retardants on printed circuit boards, plastic casings, cables and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) cable insulation that release highly toxic dioxins and furans when burned to retrieve copper from the wires. Due to the hazards involved, disposing and recycling E-waste has serious legal and environmental implications. When this waste is land filled or incinerated, it poses significant contamination problems. Landfills leach toxins into groundwater, and incinerators emit toxic air pollutants including dioxins. Likewise, the recycling of computers has serious occupational and environmental implications, particularly when the recycling industry is often marginally profitable at best and often cannot afford to take the necessary precautions to protect the environment and worker health.