Oakland, Calif. – September 17, 2026 -- Vietnam Waste Solutions (VWS), the Vietnamese subsidiary of Oakland-based California Waste Solutions (CWS), has proposed a 50- to 60-megawatt waste-to-energy plant at its Da Phuoc Integrated Solid Waste Facility (DPI) outside Ho Chi Minh City, adding to roughly $200 million already invested in the site.
VWS proposes new power plant to expand Vietnam's largest engineered landfill
DPI, a 341-acre facility built in the mid-2000s to the U.S. Subtitle D standard, currently buries up to 6,500 tons of municipal solid waste daily -- about 2.4 million tons a year -- covering more than half of Ho Chi Minh City's household waste output of roughly 10,000 tons per day. VWS this year formally submitted the waste-to-energy proposal and is now moving through appraisal and permitting.
New plant would process waste directly, distinct from existing landfill-gas power system
DPI already generates electricity from captured landfill gas produced as buried organic material decomposes, supporting current site operations. The proposed 50- to 60-megawatt plant is a separate system that would recover energy directly from residual municipal waste before final disposal, rather than from decomposition gas. Specialized recycling lines are also planned to supplement the material-recovery infrastructure already on site.
Project positioned to support Vietnam's 2050 net-zero target
Michael Duong, President of California Waste Solutions, said the renewable proposal aligns with the company's practice of upgrading existing infrastructure for both the operator and surrounding communities. CWS will oversee the energy systems, while Vietnamese contractors -- trained over years of collaboration with VWS -- will handle construction and daily operations.
Facility built on U.S. environmental standards, now run mostly by Vietnamese staff
DPI dates to the 1990s, when Ho Chi Minh City asked CWS to build a U.S.-standard disposal site following the normalization of U.S.-Vietnam relations; CWS agreed on condition of sole ownership and construction to American environmental standards. David Duong, founder and CEO of CWS, said quality has been the company's guiding principle since it began as a trash-collection and recycling operation in Oakland. The site's liner, leachate and gas-collection systems were sourced from the United States and remain a benchmark for landfill construction in Vietnam.
International equipment suppliers underpin water treatment and recycling operations
Germany's Wehrle supplies leachate-treatment technology, combining biological processing, membrane filtration and reverse osmosis; VWS states the treated water leaving its process is cleaner than water in nearby local waterways, based on its own operating data. The Netherlands' Bollegraaf provides sorting and material-separation equipment, while Austria's Komptech supplies grinding, turning, aerating and screening equipment for the site's composting operations.
VWS says DPI now operates with an almost entirely Vietnamese workforce, with a single U.S. employee remaining on site -- a structure the company expects to carry into the new waste-to-energy build-out.