E-waste is overflowing landfills. At one sprawling Vietnam market, workers recycle some of it
The world is producing more electronic waste than ever — 62 million metric tons in 2022
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Dam Chan Nguyen saves dead and dying computers.
When he first started working two decades ago in Nhat Tao market, Ho Chi Minh City’s biggest informal recycling market, he usually salvaged computers with bulky monitors and heavy processors. Now he works mostly with laptops and the occasional MacBook.
But the central tenet of his work hasn't changed: Nothing goes to waste. What can be fixed is fixed. What can be salvaged gets re-used elsewhere. What's left is sold as scrap.
“We utilize everything possible,” he said.
The shop he works at is one of many in a market that spreads across several streets filled with haggling customers. Most repair shops are a single room crammed with junked electronic devices or e-waste with tables placed outside. Workers, many of them migrants from across Vietnam, repair or salvage items like laptops, scarred mobile phones, camera lenses, television remotes, even entire air conditioning units. Other shops sell brand-new electronics alongside old, refurbished items.
The bustle is emblematic of a world that is producing more e-waste than ever — 62 million metric tons in 2022, projected to grow to 82 million metric tons by 2030, according to a report by the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union and research arm UNITAR. Asian countries generate almost half of it.
“We are currently generating e-waste at an unprecedented rate,” said Garam Bel, e-waste officer at the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union.
Managing that waste is crucial. It's filling up landfills at an alarming pace and dangerous chemicals like lead leak into the environment and harm human
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