Take-back and recycling

The general director looked up at engineer Thái and asked:

• What did you ask to see me about?
  Engineer Thái asked permission to sit, then said:
• Director, our company's guiding principle is environmentally friendly production. Being environmentally friendly is the standard that every industry now aspires to. We also have standing with the community thanks to implementing environmentally friendly policies within our means.
  Director, I am the person assigned to take part in the product design workshop. This time we are designing a flying car to keep up with world trends. Until now we have understood environmentally friendly production to mean that the factory is not dirty, its waste is all treated, and the staff live and work in a clean environment. But Director, that kind of environmental friendliness is very shallow and will quickly fall behind the world.
  The general director frowned and asked:
• What do you mean?
• Director, I have just reread Vietnam's 2014 Law on Environmental Protection and discovered something great. Article 87 of the 2014 Law on Environmental Protection, clause 1, provides: "The owner of a production, business or service establishment must take back, for treatment, the discarded part of products (which it has produced)."
  That means we are responsible for the products we have supplied to the market for their whole life. The packaging in which products are supplied must be taken back for recycling. If customers no longer use a flying car, we must take it back for recycling too. The aim of this provision is to reduce waste entering the environment. If all companies did this, waste would fall by more than 80 per cent.
• It seems impractical, so no one seems to comply, and no agency supervises enforcement of this provision. Implementing it would raise production costs and cut profit. The shareholders' board would not agree.
• Director, I have calculated carefully, and the result is quite the opposite: any company that implements this provision will increase its profit.
  Director, in order to take back and recycle the parts customers do not use, which have value only as packaging or decoration, we are obliged not to use printing ink on plastic or on cardboard. Ink chemicals make recycling difficult. Dropping ink will lower production costs. We will use heat-burning techniques to print product information on the packaging, which ensures it looks good but costs no ink chemicals.
  Then, in the design process, we will have to rack our brains to calculate that when customers no longer use the product, we can take it back and extract the materials to restore them as before. For this part we spend only brainpower, not money. We will have raw materials without needing to extract them from nature any more. Any additional extraction would only be a small amount.
• And what about used machine lubricant? How can that be recovered, and how can it be recycled to become new again with all its original physical and chemical properties?
• Director, this too costs only brainpower, not money. My colleagues and I have also researched reusing and recycling lubricating oil with full physical and chemical properties as the original. It can all be done. Of however many tonnes of lubricant we sell to the market, we will take back nearly all through the dealers.
• And the alloys, electronic circuits, chips? How can they be recycled to extract the materials as before? They are all high-grade alloys, not easy to extract. The extraction cost would be very high.
• Director, again we spend only our heads, not much from our wallets. We have discussed this among ourselves. Precisely because we always keep in mind the goal of extracting and recovering the materials, when we design for production we have a thorough method, so that later they can be taken back and separated very quickly. Moreover, if we extract and recover materials, we will cut costs by more than half. Profit will exceed that of producing and discarding as in the old way.
  The general director pondered and said:
• Thái, in a position like mine, a general director bears heavy pressure from many sides. I must make big profits to satisfy the shareholders' greed. I must guarantee the livelihood, wages and insurance of all employees. I must ensure the product can compete with the powerful companies of the world, very good and at an acceptable price. I must ensure environmentally friendly production as we have promised the community. Now you bring up this provision of the Law on Environmental Protection as well. Hearing you, it sounds optimistic, but from my experience in life I dare not believe anything easily.
  Looking around, I see no one mentioning your Great provision at all. Even the competent authorities seem not to have read it. Now you ask me to agree to be the first to implement this provision. It is like urging me to volunteer to be first on Mars; if I die, who will support my wife and children?
  But hearing you say there will be profit stirs me too. I ask you to research further and report back to me next week. I will decide whether to apply the provision. If we can, we really will set a leading example in taking back unused accompanying products and products that have reached the end of use, helping to reduce waste greatly. Landfills are already overloaded. All right, go and study it. Thank you for today's talk. 👨‍💼

If companies implemented Article 87 of the 2014 Law on Environmental Protection, on taking back for recycling the products they have put on the market, waste would fall considerably. The extraction of natural resources would also fall, and the land would be less dug up and eroded.
But this is also a great ethical challenge for everyone. Everyone must understand protecting the living environment. Everyone must see the danger of producing much waste. Everyone must eagerly do something to help protect the environment.
One day, if a scrap of rubbish is blown along a road in the neighbourhood, everyone will talk and look for who threw that scrap away so carelessly. The clean and beautiful nations are all developed and powerful ones.