The Ho Chi Minh City Urban Environment One Member Ltd.Co. has invested in a project on recycling plastic bags into fuel oil, as part of efforts to handle the large amount of discarded nylon bags in the city, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE).

According to the latest statistics of the MONRE’s Pollution Control Department, 7,000 tonnes of garbage are collected every day in Ho Chi Minh City , among which 70-80 tonnes are plastic waste. This means that on average, the city dwellers use 5-9 million plastic bags each day.

The recycling process is quite simple. Raw nylon does not need to be cleaned after the collecting and sorting procedures. It can be transferred directly to the incineration and undergo a process of pyrolysis to become fuel oil. Currently, the company is using waste of nylon bags collected every day for the production.

The MONRE website quoted Huynh Minh Nhut, director of the HCM City Urban Environment One Member Ltd.Co., as saying that the company has bought two incinerators to recycle polymer-derived plastic bags, with a total capacity of 15 tonnes a day.

The initial result was positive, with about 6,000 litres of fuel oil produced, which can be used as fuel for production plants. From now until the end of the year, another 10 incinerators will be purchased to increase the incinerating capacity to 75 tonne per day.

By then, apart from using raw nylon as production material, the company will ask the city for permission to reopen the closed landfills such as Go Cat and Dong Thanh to collect plastic materials.

The successful production of fuel oil from nylon has opened a new direction for waste management. In the long run, it will help improve the environment of the areas surrounding landfills. In the immediate future, the amount of waste being recycled into environmentally-friendly products will increase, along with a reduction of landfill waste.-VNA