New Insider Deals are perfect for spring and summerA vendor selling used remote controls for various home appliances takes a nap in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. 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.
Nguyen, 44, is one of three employees in the shop. His long years in the business have led to relationships with regular customers, including some other computer repair centers who rely on him for tricky jobs. It requires keeping up with changing trends and technology, so he’s constantly learning via friends and the internet.
Then there's Ho Chi Minh City's increasing extreme heat. The little shop can feel like an oven, particularly in summer.Informal waste workers like Nguyen can help solve a problem that plagues formal operations: Getting their hands on enough waste to make recycling cost-effective. They don't wait for people to bring it to them.
Such collaborations are already being attempted in some places. In the Indian capital of New Delhi, for instance, a company called EcoWork has built a co-working space where informal recyclers can dismantle their waste. They can use modern machines to do it more safely, and aggregating it means better prices while also saving on transportation costs. And that makes it easier for companies that want to buy the salvaged materials at a scale that isn’t possible otherwise.
The Southeast Asian nation is among the few countries in the region with laws to deal with e-waste. It set up a national plan to manage e-waste in 2020, aiming to collect and treat 70% of it by 2025, and has been trying to integrate informal workers into formal systems to give them better protections.