Southeast Asia to spend $40b to manage waste

Southeast Asia to spend $40b to manage waste

SINGAPORE (AFP): Rapidly-growing Southeast Asian countries are expected to spend a whopping US$40 billion annually on disposing household and industrial waste within a decade, a regional study showed yesterday.

Currently, these countries spent about $12 billion a year on waste management projects.

The Singapore-based Regional Institute of Environmental Technology (RIET), which carried out the study jointly with a German company, INTEC GmbH, said the figures were derived from empirical studies due to the absence of reliable statistics.

The study covered Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

RIET Managing director Philippe Bergeron told AFP that the waste management in the region was set to rapidly expand in the next few years, creating huge investment opportunities for foreign waste disposal companies, equipment suppliers and plant contractors.

"This is the message of the new study focused principally on municipal and industrial waste in metropolitan areas," he said.

RIET, a non-profit organization supported by the Commission of the European Union and the Singapore government, was established to promote effective environmental technology throughout Asia and to facilitate cooperation between the two continents.

Bergeron said that the future of waste management technology in the region was bright because environmental protection was increasingly being viewed as a vital cog in business and a pre- requisite for sustainable growth.

Citing Taiwan as an example, he said government moves to privatize municipal solid waste collection, disposal and recycling would open up a huge market for environmental technology and services.

"There is a big need to build capacity management in solid waste in the region and I am convinced that this can be met through joint ventures between local and foreign partners, particularly from Europe," Bergeron said.