The General Department of Environment (GDE) is about to issue a draft decision regulating the responsibility of production and trading companies in reclaiming non-degradable waste such as batteries.
According to an official from the Legislation Bureau of the GDE, Le Van Hung, once approved, the draft will concrete the implementation of the Law on Environmental Protection.
The draft would provide enterprises with detailed instructions on how to collect and process expired or discarded products, said Hung.
Initially drafted six years ago, the law set out to compel production and trading units to collect expired or discarded products, including batteries, but without much result, Hung added.
Once complete, the draft will be submitted to the Government for consideration and approval before coming into effect.
A recent GDE survey found that most manufacturers in Viet Nam were aware that batteries become toxic when expired, necessitating their collection and treatment.
Aware of the harmful nature of expired batteries, Dry Cell and Storage Battery JSC (PINACO), a leading battery company in Viet Nam, invested in technologies aimed at treating their industrial waste two years ago.
A company official said that it was currently completing procedures in hiring a unit to treat expired batteries, which it used to recycle.
Deputy director of the Tia Sang Battery JSC To Van Thanh said that the State needed to regulate procedures based on collecting and discarding batteries.
A report released by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) showed that around 40,000 tonnes of leaden batteries were discharged in Viet Nam last year. The figure is expected to increase to nearly 70,000 tonnes by 2015.
According to the report, almost all discarded batteries were manually recycled at craft villages, negatively affecting people's health and the environment.
Dong Mai craft village in northern Hung Yen Province has attracted more than 500 labourers to collect batteries.
Nguyen Van Nam, head of the Economic Bureau at the Hung Yen Province People's Committee, said that the committee would move the village to a place far from residential areas as wastewater, smoke and dust, caused by lead, had significantly polluted the environment.
The IFC estimated that Viet Nam's current 28 million motorbikes and 1.5 million cars would increase by between 20 to 25 per cent per year. According to the forecast, Viet Nam would have around 60 million motorbikes and cars by 2020, synonymous with millions of expired batteries turning to waste.
The corporation pinpointed that such an amount of batteries would be enough to provide material to lead refinery factories in meeting domestic demand.
Thanh said that it had been difficult to collect expired batteries as most been sold to scrap-iron dealers at competitive prices that battery manufacturers such as the Tia Sang Battery JSC could not pay.
Most battery companies, especially import companies, admitted they had never considered collecting expired batteries.
Regarding this issue, the former chief inspector of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Le Van Kieu, said that it would be difficult to encourage import companies to collect expired batteries without economic benefits.
"It would be a challenge for them if they collected expired batteries merely for environmental protection purposes," Kieu said, adding that companies were willing to pay 10 per cent of their profits to local authorities for the collection of expired batteries.
He recommended that enterprises take responsibility on their own and co-ordinate with local authorities in collecting expired products.
"While it might be a little late, it is essential that the draft is issued as soon as possible," Kieu said.
