Located adjacent to Gia Lam suburban district in Hanoi, about 25 kilometers east of the capital city’s central area, Khoai hamlet is well known as a big scrap collection center.

Visitors to Khoai hamlet can see many sacks containing recycled plastic and plastic bags inside piled up at the entrance gate to the hamlet, creating small hills 10 meters tall. Every day, there are hundreds of waste-laden trucks and "self-modified" vehicles going in and out of the entrance gate.

Some deserted land plots have become places for people to gather sacks of discarded things. The land plots are the workplace of many people. They are in charge of classifying collected plastic.

Sitting in the middle of a pile of plastic higher than her head, with agile hands, Nguyen Thi Thuy (from Thai Nguyen) was seen recently quickly classifying waste into many different piles of plastic bags, bottles, pill blisters and raincoats.

Quickly wiping the sweat from her cheeks, Thuy said she begins working at 7am and ends at 5pm every day. She selects plastic recyclable products which will be carried away to a production workshop in the village for recycling.

With 10 working hours, Thuy can earn up to VND200,000-300,000 a day.

Thuy said when she first arrived in Khoai hamlet, she was shocked because of the bad odor from plastic waste. However, she quickly got used to the new circumstances and has been working there for three years.

Nguyen Thi Hoa from Gia Lam district in Hanoi, who has 30 years of experience, said in the early 1990s, workshop owners ran small business and only accepted waste in the province. Later, when realizing that recycling could bring high and stable incomes, they began traveling throughout the country to collect waste for recycling. Some of them even sought materials from imports.

The number of households earning a living by collecting plastic waste and recycling has increased rapidly over the last 10 years. They have expanded their plastics treatment workshops. 

Hoa said she took the job because it does not require high skills and hard work. Everyone can undertake the job provided that they can sustain the bad odor from plastics, especially on hot summer days.

“While we have to work in toxic atmosphere every day, I can earn VND230,000-250,000 a day,” Hoa said, adding that only hired workers stay at workshops, while workshops’ owners travel to seek waste sources.

The classification, treatment, recycling and plastics production are mostly undertaken by women, while men work as porters who carry sacks of plastics to the waste gathering places in the village and to production workshops.

Observers say that the craft village has developed rapidly and systematically, and is now considered the country’s largest plastics recycling center.

Billionaires’ worries

Phung Van Thang, 70, a local resident, said hundreds of households in the village are earning a living by collecting and recycling plastic.

Twenty years ago, local people collected waste and recycled plastics themselves. But recently, as the production scale has become bigger, the owners of recycling workshops have had to hire workers from other localities. Therefore, most of the workers are from other cities and provinces. 

Meanwhile, workshop owners leave the village very early in the morning to collect scrap and only return home when it becomes dark. Many of them have become rich and are considered dong billionaires.

However, even billionaires have worries. Though the business can bring high income and has helped many people improve their living standards, they fear that the living environment is getting worse because of the smoke from the recycling workshops.

Phung Van Vinh, head of Khoai hamlet, said collecting and recycling plastics is the major career of 600 local households. Many households can earn billions of dong a year and build 2-3-storey houses and villas. However, the living environment and people’s daily activities have been seriously affected. 

Vinh said his hamlet has proposed that the Nhu Quynh Town People’s Committee help local people by building an incinerator that treats non-recycable scraps in a way that does not cause harm to the environment.

Tien Phong