Each day, more waste arrives, piling up along the roads and rivers of Xa Cau. The village is one of hundreds of informal recycling hubs encircling Vietnam’s capital, where plastic is sorted, shredded and melted by hand.

These so-called craft villages present a paradox: they help recycle part of the 1.8 million tonnes of plastic waste Vietnam produces each year and provide much-needed income for local workers.

But the work is largely unregulated, polluting the environment and posing serious health risks to those involved, workers and experts told AFP.

“This job is extremely dirty. The environmental pollution is really severe,” said Lanh, 64, who asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of losing her job.

The dilemma is familiar across fast-growing economies, where plastic consumption has outpaced governments’ ability to collect, sort and recycle waste.
Even in wealthy countries, recycling rates remain low because plastics are costly to process and difficult to separate.

In Vietnam’s recycling villages, the problem is compounded by rudimentary methods that expose workers to toxic chemicals and release dangerous emissions.

“Air pollution control is zero in such facilities,” said Hoang Thanh Vinh, a waste recycling analyst at the United Nations Development Programme. Untreated wastewater is often dumped directly into rivers and canals, he added.

The true scale of the problem is hard to measure, with few comprehensive studies. In one village, Minh Khai, sediment analysis revealed “very high contamination of lead and the presence of dioxins”, as well as flammable furan – all linked to cancer.

In 2008, Vietnam’s environment ministry found that residents of recycling villages had a life expectancy up to 10 years shorter than the national average. Local authorities and the ministry did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment.

Lanh believes the toxic waste in Xa Cau caused her husband’s blood cancer. Still, she continues sorting rubbish to pay his medical bills. “This village is full of cancer cases, people just waiting to die,” she said.

Sickness and wealth

There is no official data on cancer rates in the villages, but AFP spoke to more than half a dozen workers in Xa Cau and Minh Khai who said colleagues or family members had developed the disease.

Xuan Quach, coordinator of the Vietnam Zero Waste Alliance, said prolonged exposure to such a “toxic environment” makes higher health risks inevitable.

Dat, 60, has sorted plastic in Xa Cau for a decade and said the job “definitely affects your health”. He added: “There’s no shortage of cancer cases in this village.”

Yet there is also no shortage of workers, drawn by the economic lifeline recycling provides. In Xa Cau, plastic waste surrounds multi-storey homes, some with ornate facades bearing the years they were built.

“We get richer thanks to this business,” said Nguyen Thi Tuyen, 58, who lives in a two-storey house. “Now all the houses are brick houses. In the past, we were just a farming village.”

Most of the plastic processed in these villages is domestic, residents and researchers say. But despite recycling only about a third of its own plastic waste, Vietnam also imports thousands of tonnes each year from Europe, the United States and other parts of Asia.

Imports surged after China stopped accepting plastic waste in 2018. Although Vietnam has since tightened regulations and announced plans to phase out imports, shipments from the US and European Union still exceeded 200,000 tonnes last year.

In Minh Khai, the owner of a plastic pellet factory said domestic waste alone was insufficient. “I have to import from overseas,” said Dinh, 23, who gave only one name, speaking over the roar of heavy machinery.

Much domestic waste is never sorted, making it difficult to recycle. While the authorities have introduced measures such as banning the burning of non-recyclable waste and building modern facilities, enforcement remains weak.

Burning continues and unusable waste is often dumped in empty lots, Vinh said. He added that the government should help recyclers relocate to industrial parks with proper environmental safeguards.

“The current way of recycling in recycling villages is not good for the environment at all,” he concluded, calling for the sector – which handles a quarter of Vietnam’s recycling – to be formalised.