Nearly 10 schools in Tra Cu District in southern Tra Vinh Province have built a small-scale waste burning system on campus to replace the previous dumping system.

A small-scale stove for waste burning at the Tap Son Secondary School in southern Tra Vinh Province.

Tap Son Secondary School is the first one in the district to introduce a stove for waste burning two years ago after hearing of a similar model applied in neighbouring province of Vinh Long\'s Tra On District.

The concrete stove, at 4-m-high with capacity of about 12cu.m, can deal with 120 kilos of waste each time. The facility cost about VND7 million (USD340).

Kim Thi, a Tap Son School\'s teacher, said that waste treatment had been a headache for years for the school of about 800 students. It discharged about 200 kilos of waste every day.

He said the discharged waste was usually dumped, emitting a smell and triggering complaints from residents surrounding the school. Land for the dump could not be expanded.

Now, students put waste in a basket in class and then gather all the waste into the stove after school for burning, Thi said.

Following this model, Phuoc Hung Secondary School also built one stove. School principal Vo Hao Quang said the stove cost was affordable and reasonable. After the burning process, there would be only two kilos of ashes.

Chairman of Phuoc Hung Commune People\'s Committee Tran Van Cong said that the commune was planning to build a larger stove to tackle the waste discharged from local markets.

Vice chairman of Tra Cu District People\'s Committee Nguyen Van Ut said that about 10 local schools had applied the model.

The district would expand it to local residential areas, he said, expecting that the move would help improve environmental hygiene and rural lifestyle.

He added that they were asking the province\'s Department of Science and Technology for further technical supports to raise the stove\'s efficiency.