Professional Interpreters at Inception Seminar for OPTOCE

2020/08/08

The project "Ocean Plastic Turned into an Opportunity in the Circular Economy (OPTOCE)” was launched in HCMC city, aiming to reduce the release of plastic waste to the ocean by involving local energy-intensive industries in waste management and energy recovery. The inception meeting was jointly organized by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and the Norwegian Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research (SINTEF).

The project is funded by the Norwegian government, expecting to collect wastes from polluted hot-spots, major river basins, and beachfront areas and to use waste as a source of energy in local energy-intensive industries.

Initial partner countries of the project are Vietnam, China, India, Myanmar, and Thailand. These countries have 3 billion people, about 1 billion people of whom live near water bodies and produce about 176,000 tons of plastic waste on a daily basis, equivalent to 64 million tons per year – representing a plastic pollution challenge that these countries can not address alone.

Cement manufacturing, iron and steel production, and electricity generation consume an enormous amount of coal and produce more than 30% of the world’s CO2. If non-recyclable plastic waste is energy-recovered and substitutes coal, this would constitute a win-win solution, as both the amounts of plastic deposited in the oceans as well as the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere will be reduced.

“Recycling of plastic waste is a preferred solution, but not all types of plastic can be recycled. The demand for recycled plastic products is not high because of the low cost of new material, the high investment required for recycling.

Co-generation is more cost-effective, more resource-efficient, and environmentally friendly than incineration or landfill, leaving little residues and reduce dependence on primary resources.

Interpreting these important events gives us the chance to do our part to protect the environment.