Hanoi, 28 March 2023: Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific (RRC.AP) of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in collaboration with Vietnam Cleaner Production Centre Company Limited (VNCPC) organised an in-country stakeholder consultation cum expert review workshop under the project ‘Development and Dissemination of Technical Guidelines for Plastics and Resin Pellets Leakage Prevention from Factories and Informal Recycling Sector in the ASEAN’ in Hanoi, Viet Nam.
Launched in May 2022 and funded by the Regional Knowledge Centre for Marine Plastic Debris (RKC-MPD) of ERIA, the project aims to harness best practices and insights from six cities across Thailand, the Philippines, Lao PDR, and Viet Nam to support the development of technical guidelines that could help ASEAN Member States in preventing plastics leakage from factories and informal recycling sector.
Mr Michikazu Kojima, ERIA’s Senior Advisor for the Environmental Issue, said the good practices collected through this project would be relevant in the respective countries and provide meaningful lessons learned for the ASEAN region as a whole.
‘The Technical Guidelines developed for plastics and resin pellets leakage prevention is expected to build capacity in the region,’ he stated in his opening remarks.
Dr Guilberto Borongan, Director of AIT-RRC.AP, echoed Mr Kojima’s statement that both the Technical Guidelines and the Situation Assessment Report produced from the project are expected to support capacity-building and awareness-raising through training and knowledge sharing among stakeholders in ASEAN Member States
‘The stakeholders targeted for this exercise are government officers including the staff in charge of the environmental impact assessment, cleaner production centres as well as associations of plastic recycling and plastic industries, and also the informal waste sector such as junk shops,’ said Dr Borongan in a brief introduction to the project.
The project, as explained further by Dr Borongan, is implemented in alignment with the ASEAN Framework of Action on Marine Debris and the Bangkok Declaration on Combating Marine Debris in ASEAN. The main activities conducted throughout this project include data collection and scoping exercises across the six participating cities.
Ms Do Thi Diu, the RECP Consultant from VNCPC and Mr Huno Solomon Kofi Mensah, Senior Programme Officer of the Waste and Resource Management Cluster at RRC.AP of AIT then respectively presented the draft of the Situation Assessment Report and the Technical Guidelines.
The Technical Guidelines, according to Mr Solomon’s presentation, are developed based on Environmental Performance Objective Framework that takes five aspects into account: Air, environmental sitting, land and soil, litter and debris, and water and wastewater.
Following the presentation, some participants of the workshop raised questions and shared input to improve the drafts.
‘I really appreciate the time you have taken to sit with us and help us review this document that we have produced from the project,’ said Mr Solomon.
The next step for this project will be to incorporate the feedback collected during this workshop and proceed with data analysis. As soon as the guidelines are finalised, knowledge-sharing and capacity-building activities will be conducted to strengthen the capacity of ASEAN Member States in preventing plastics and resin pellets leakage from factories and the informal recycling sector.
Knowledge Management Associate
Hanoi, 28 March 2023: Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific (RRC.AP) of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in collaboration with Vietnam Cleaner Production Centre Company Limited (VNCPC) organised an in-country stakeholder consultation cum expert review workshop under the project ‘Development and Dissemination of Technical Guidelines for Plastics and Resin Pellets Leakage Prevention from Factories and Informal Recycling Sector in the ASEAN’ in Hanoi, Viet Nam.
Launched in May 2022 and funded by the Regional Knowledge Centre for Marine Plastic Debris (RKC-MPD) of ERIA, the project aims to harness best practices and insights from six cities across Thailand, the Philippines, Lao PDR, and Viet Nam to support the development of technical guidelines that could help ASEAN Member States in preventing plastics leakage from factories and informal recycling sector.
Mr Michikazu Kojima, ERIA’s Senior Advisor for the Environmental Issue, said the good practices collected through this project would be relevant in the respective countries and provide meaningful lessons learned for the ASEAN region as a whole.
‘The Technical Guidelines developed for plastics and resin pellets leakage prevention is expected to build capacity in the region,’ he stated in his opening remarks.
Dr Guilberto Borongan, Director of AIT-RRC.AP, echoed Mr Kojima’s statement that both the Technical Guidelines and the Situation Assessment Report produced from the project are expected to support capacity-building and awareness-raising through training and knowledge sharing among stakeholders in ASEAN Member States
‘The stakeholders targeted for this exercise are government officers including the staff in charge of the environmental impact assessment, cleaner production centres as well as associations of plastic recycling and plastic industries, and also the informal waste sector such as junk shops,’ said Dr Borongan in a brief introduction to the project.
The project, as explained further by Dr Borongan, is implemented in alignment with the ASEAN Framework of Action on Marine Debris and the Bangkok Declaration on Combating Marine Debris in ASEAN. The main activities conducted throughout this project include data collection and scoping exercises across the six participating cities.
Ms Do Thi Diu, the RECP Consultant from VNCPC and Mr Huno Solomon Kofi Mensah, Senior Programme Officer of the Waste and Resource Management Cluster at RRC.AP of AIT then respectively presented the draft of the Situation Assessment Report and the Technical Guidelines.
The Technical Guidelines, according to Mr Solomon’s presentation, are developed based on Environmental Performance Objective Framework that takes five aspects into account: Air, environmental sitting, land and soil, litter and debris, and water and wastewater.
Following the presentation, some participants of the workshop raised questions and shared input to improve the drafts.
‘I really appreciate the time you have taken to sit with us and help us review this document that we have produced from the project,’ said Mr Solomon.
The next step for this project will be to incorporate the feedback collected during this workshop and proceed with data analysis. As soon as the guidelines are finalised, knowledge-sharing and capacity-building activities will be conducted to strengthen the capacity of ASEAN Member States in preventing plastics and resin pellets leakage from factories and the informal recycling sector.
Knowledge Management Associate
