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CircularJourney

Southeast Asia — 2027

Vietnam

Vietnam is urbanising and industrialising at speed, and its waste system is being rebuilt while it runs. Formal collection, an established informal recovery trade and new extended producer responsibility rules are arriving at the same time, in the same cities.
Research plannedOn the roadmap. Host organizations are being approached.

Research question

When a waste system is formalised quickly, what happens to the people and the material flows that the informal trade was already handling?

Written before the mission, and published unchanged. Findings are assessed against this question rather than the question being rewritten to fit the findings.

Research scope

Waste management in a rapidly urbanising economy

What we want to understand

  1. 01How household segregation is actually practised, as opposed to how it is mandated.
  2. 02What share of recovered material moves through informal channels, and who captures the value.
  3. 03How the 2022 extended producer responsibility provisions are being implemented in practice.
  4. 04What happens to organic waste in cities without large-scale composting capacity.
  5. 05Which parts of the system depend on export markets for recovered material.
Region
Southeast Asia
Research lens
02 · Peer countriesWhat are countries facing comparable challenges doing differently?
Research theme
Municipal systems, plastics and the informal sector
Field research
Planned for 2027
Framework themes
collectionsegregationinformal sectorplasticorganic wastepolicyeconomicsindia applicability
Relevant SDGs
SDG 8SDG 11SDG 12

Cities

Vietnam

Hanoi

A capital rebuilding household collection while an established informal recovery trade continues to operate alongside it.

Research planned
Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam largest urban waste load, and the clearest place to see industrial and commercial streams meet municipal ones.

Research planned

Missions

CJ-2027-VNResearch planned

Vietnam: formalisation and the informal trade

The first field mission. Two cities, chosen because the same national policy is being implemented under very different conditions in each.

Reached: Travel (1/10)Early 2027

Findings

No findings yet

Field research in Vietnam is research planned. This section stays empty until there is something we have actually seen. The questions above are what we will be asking.

What India could take from Vietnam

Assessment pending

Any judgement about transfer to India would be speculation until the system has been seen working, and its costs and dependencies understood. Anything published here will be labelled as a proposal until a pilot reports.

What Vietnam could take from India

Nothing has been researched yet, so nothing is claimed. These are the parts of India’s experience we expect to be worth putting in front of practitioners here, and what we will ask them about.

  • Cooperative models that formalised waste-pickers without displacing them.
  • Sustained household segregation across cities far larger than Hanoi.
  • Decentralised organic processing operated at ward rather than city scale.

Read the reasoning on why this is a two-way journey.

Case studies

HanoiPlanned

Informal material recovery alongside formal collection, Vietnam

An established trade of collectors, itinerant buyers and small aggregators recovering material in parallel with municipal collection, as formalisation policy arrives.

plasticmunicipal solid wastepackaging

Film and clips

Notices

Organizations and experts

Directory not yet open

We list an organization only once it has agreed to a public listing, and a person only with their consent. Outreach for this mission is under way; entries appear here as permissions come back.Take part