Ho Chi Minh City – Electronics producers and importers in Vietnam will have to set up disposal points from January 2015, to collect discarded products and reduce environmental pollution.

Accordingly, businesses will receive broken items from users and take them away for recycling or proper disposal. Businesses and consumers participating in the cause will receive due support without providing specific information, Thanh Nien ( Youth) News quoted the Vietnamese government’s decision.

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 from 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.

The Center for Development and Integration, a Hanoi-based NGO, estimated that each Vietnamese discharges one kilogram of electronic waste a year. The country is currently home to more than 500 electronic producers and factories, two-thirds of them foreign- invested. Source: Xinhua