Solid waste management in Vientiane, Lao P.D.R situation assessment and opportunities for waste-to-resource

Solid waste management is one of the priority
areas identified as part of GGGI’s green cities
programme in Vientiane, the capital of Lao
People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). Current
waste handling practices in Vientiane are based on
a “collect and dispose” only approach that
overlooks significant opportunities for turning
waste into resources. There is thus the potential to
adopt a paradigm change from a waste
management to a resource management
approach.
In Vientiane, the main government body
responsible for solid waste management is the
Vientiane City Office for Management and Service
(VCOMS). VCOMS oversees the collection,
transport and disposal of solid waste generated in
Vientiane. No precise figures exist on waste
collection coverage, but it is estimated that 30-
50% of the waste generated in the city is collected
by VCOMS or any of the eight private collection
companies contracted by VCOMS. The main
ambition of VCOMS with respect to the solid waste
management sector is to provide full collection
coverage in the city by 2020. One of the main
challenges to achieving this goal lies on the high
collection fees charged by VCOMS (or any of its
contractors) for the provision of these services.
Individual households, for instance, are charged 5
USD/month for a weekly collection service. This is
markedly different from the realities observed in
cities of countries with a similar level of socioeconomic
development as Lao PDR, where fees
tend to be considerably lower than those charged
in Vientiane, with the provision of these services
often being partly subsidized by local government
authorities. Other challenges identified to achieve
a higher waste collection coverage are the low
accessibility of some areas by waste collection
trucks, especially in low income areas, and the
limited awareness of the population in general to
the need of collecting and properly handling
waste.