City Oil Field CEO Jeong Yeong-hun, left, shakes hands with BIWASE Chairman Tran Chien Cong, center, after signing a memorandum of understanding in Binh Duong, Vietnam, Monday. Courtesy of City Oil Field

By Kim Jae-heun

City Oil Field, a local waste recycling firm, signed a business agreement with Vietnam’s largest environmental company BIWASE to cooperate in recycling waste plastics and promoting a virtuous cycle, the company said Wednesday.

In 2020, BIWASE formed a partnership with City Oil Field to run the very first chemical recycling project in Vietnam, which adopted the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system. EPR obliges producers to reuse more than a certain amount of recyclable waste per the related enforced ordinances on saving resources and promoting recycling. The firms signed a memorandum of understanding, Monday.

Under the agreement, City Oil Field plans to start construction of a regenerated green oil plant on a recycling site owned by BIWASE this year. It will also build Vietnam’s first chemical recycling facility to recycle plastic waste under EPR recognition.

The partnership will kick off on Jan. 1, 2024, in line with the implementation of EPR for additional packaging materials promoted by the Vietnamese government.

“We are happy to provide our eco-friendly technology to Vietnam to successfully promote its EPR system. The joint venture established through this agreement is expected to develop into a leading carbon-neutral company,” City Oil Field CEO Jeong Yeong-hun said.

Vietnam incinerates most of its plastics and vinyl waste. The country has been urgently securing green technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It introduced the EPR system in 2020 to protect the environment and starting from 2024, Vietnam will introduce various recycling technologies to deal with other recyclable packaging materials.

Other countries in Asia including India, Thailand and Indonesia are also suffering from severe air pollution due to chemical agriculture, coal-based power generation and lack of air pollution-related solutions.