Electronic waste has become a dangerous threat to the global environment. Photo credit: EPA/Vietnam News Agency
Electronics producers and importers in Vietnam will have to set up disposal points, starting next January, to collect discarded products and reduce environmental pollution, according to a government decision.
The businesses will receive the broken items from users and take them away for recycling or proper disposal, news website VnExpress reported.
Local authorities will encourage people to join the effort, according to the decision signed by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
Businesses and consumers participating in the cause will receive due support, it said, without providing specific information.
The disposal points will begin by receiving fluorescent bulbs, compact discs, computers and their parts, printers, fax machines, scanners, cameras, cell phones, tablets and DVD players.
Starting in 2016, people can also bring photocopiers, televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners and washing machines to the electronic recycling points.
All garbage in Vietnam has so far been deposited in the same dumps -- a practice which poses a significant threat to the environment as the electronic waste discharges harmful chemicals and heavy metals into the soil and water.
Statistics by the Center for Development and Integration, a Hanoi-based NGO estimated that each person in Vietnam discharges one kilogram of electronic waste a year, Vietnam News Agency reported.
The country is currently home to more than 500 electronic producers and factories, two-thirds of them foreign-invested.
Electronic waste poses a rising threat to the global environment.
Data gathered by United Nations organizations, governments and non-government and scientific organizations released last December suggested that electrical waste will grow by 33 percent by 2017 and amount to a mass equivalent to 200 Empire State Buildings.
Electronic waste in 2012 weighed 54 million tons, the data showed.
Thanh Nien News
