2011 Assessment Of Plastic Waste Generation And Its Potential Recycling Of Household In Can Tho City VN Envi

Author's personal copy
Environ Monit Assess (2011) 175:23–35
DOI 10.1007/s10661-010-1490-8

Assessment of plastic waste generation and its potential recycling of household solid waste in Can Tho City, Vietnam
Nguyen Phuc Thanh · Yasuhiro Matsui ·
Takeshi Fujiwara

Received: 21 August 2009 / Accepted: 20 April 2010 / Published online: 20 May 2010
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract Plastic solid waste has become a serious problem when considering the disposal alternatives following the sequential hierarchy of sound solid waste management. This study was undertaken to assess the quantity and composition of household solid waste, especially plastic waste to identify opportunities for waste recycling. A 1month survey of 130 households was carried out in Can Tho City, the capital city of the Mekong
Delta region in southern Vietnam. Household solid waste was collected from each household and classified into ten physical categories; especially plastic waste was sorted into 22 subcategories. The average household solid waste generation rate was 281.27 g/cap/day. The compostable and recyclable shares respectively accounted for high percentage as 80.74% and 11%. Regarding plastic waste, the average plastic waste generation rate was 17.24 g/cap/day; plastic packaging and plastic containers dominated with the high percentage, 95.64% of plastic waste. Plastic shopping bags were especially identified as the major component, accounting for 45.72% of total plastic waste. Relevant factors such as household income

N. P. Thanh (B) · Y. Matsui · T. Fujiwara
Graduate School of Environmental Science,
Okayama University, Japan 3-1-1 Tsushima-naka,
Okayama 700-8530, Japan e-mail: [e-mail], [e-mail] and household size were found to have an existing correlation to plastic waste generation in detailed composition. The household habits and behaviors of plastic waste discharge and the aspects of environmental impacts and resource consumption for plastic waste disposal alternatives were also evaluated. Keywords Plastic waste · Household solid waste ·
Plastics recycling · Generation rate ·
Physical composition

Introduction
The rapid population growth and expanding urbanization have caused the increase of the waste generation and the variety of waste composition. Many cities and towns in developing countries face serious environmental degradation and health risks due to the weak solid waste management. For effective planning of waste management, the importance of elucidating reliable information on both the quantity and the composition of municipal solid waste (MSW), especially of household solid waste (HSW), has been recognized (Dennison et al. 1996a; McDougall et al. 2001). Many previous studies have examined HSW generation and physical HSW composition. Ojeda-Benitez et al. (2003), Alhumoud et al. (2007), and Qu et al. (2009) analyzed HSW