An international conference on paperrecycling was held in the capital city of Hanoi on December 4 in aneffort to seek opportunities to develop the industry.

The conference, jointly organised by the Vietnam Association of Paperand Pulp Producers and the Tetra Pak group, drew the participation ofrepresentatives from 50 domestic enterprises and experts from India andThailand .

Participants focused their discussions on used paper recycling andpaper packaging usage in Vietnam and globally, recycled paper demand inthe country, paper production technologies and legal issues relating tothe recycling of paper.

Dr. Vu Ngoc Bao, General Secretary of the Association, said thatalthough the country needs more than 1.8 million tonnes of paper ayear, domestic paper producers can only turn out 1.13 million tonnes,leaving the rest for imports. Vietnam also has to import a huge amountof waste paper as material for paper production due to the wastefulburning of used paper, the official added.

At present, only 25 percent of used paper in Vietnam is collected andpurchased for recycling, ranking the lowest in Asia (the rate inThailand is 65 percent; China , 31 percent; Japan , 61.4 percent; theRepublic of Korea , 67 percent). There is no large-scale businessworking as used paper purchaser in the country.

Duman Ganga paper-mill Director Tushar Shar told the participants ofhis valuable experiences in recycling used paper in India and revealedthat this could bring reasonable profit to enterprises.

Meanwhile, Tetra Pak Vietnam Communications Director Tran Hanh Dungaffirmed that the recycling of used paper helps protect the environmentand reduce CO2 emissions and that Tetra Pak is willing to help Vietnam’s small- and medium-sized enterprises recycle used paper-boxes./.