From managing waste to redesigning the systems that produce it
Brief: Tourism waste does not begin at the bin. It begins with what businesses purchase, how services are designed and delivered, what guests are given and whether the destination has the local systems to keep materials in use. In Hội An, Green Youth Collective, REED and Refillables Đong Đầy combine Upstream prevention, Reuse and refill, Organics management and practical pathways for hospitality materials with the people, services and partnerships needed to sustain them. Hoi An Eco Hub helps build this “missing middle”: the operating and learning capacity through which tourism can reduce its waste burden and contribute to a more circular, resilient destination.
Waste starts with a purchase, not a bin
A destination can’t recycle its way out of a system designed to be disposable.
Waste is built in at procurement: bottled water, miniature toiletries, takeaway packaging, surplus food, materials with nowhere local to go. By the time an item reaches a bin, most of its impact is already decided — and Hội An’s landfills show how far “careful disposal” is from reality.
So we start upstream, not with “Where should this go?” but: Was it needed? Could the service work without it? Could reuse or refill replace it? Could it stay in use longer? Only then: is there a safe, viable local pathway for what remains?
This matches international guidance. The UNEP and UNWTO Global Tourism Plastics Initiative calls for cutting unnecessary plastics and working with suppliers and waste services — not just changing what goes in the bin. The GSTC Industry Criteria expects operators to measure waste, understand local waste systems, and help improve them.
Zero Waste is a direction
Zero Waste doesn’t mean no waste exists. It’s a discipline for how resources are produced, purchased, used and recovered — as ZWIA and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation both define it: refuse, reduce, redesign for reuse, extend product life, prevent food waste, separate what remains, return biological resources to productive use, recycle only through pathways that actually work — and make residual waste visible.
Swapping one disposable for another — plastic for “compostable” — isn’t automatically circular if the service model stays single-use and no local system exists to process it. The better question isn’t what something’s made of. It’s whether it’s needed, how many times it can be used, and what will actually happen to it afterwards.
Why good intentions keep falling short
Hội An doesn’t lack awareness or pilot projects. It lacks reliable systems.
In 2021, REED helped an IUCN-backed initiative secure single-use plastic reduction commitments from 36 Hội An businesses. Those same businesses named the real barriers: no separation infrastructure, no organics processing, no viable alternatives, no benchmarks or incentives. Commitment isn’t the hard part — surviving past the campaign is.
Isolated actions lose momentum in predictable ways: separation without separated collection, reusables without a return system, trained staff working inside unchanged operation, materials collected with nowhere traceable to go, targets set with no one paying for the service.
What’s missing, every time, is the capacity to connect ideas, people and responsibilities into something that serves locally, on the daily basis.
Building the missing middle
The missing middle sits between good intention and a working circular pathway — the unglamorous questions that decide whether a material stays a resource: Who separates it, and how well? Who collects, transports, processes it? Who pays the real cost? Is there an actual market for what comes out the other end?
This is where GYC and REED work. GYC convenes community-led practice and learning. REED leads technical development, business engagement and operational accountability. Refillables Đong Đầy — an independent partner — runs the community refill stations. Tourism businesses bring demand, operational change and finance. Waste workers, community operators and farmers bring the operational knowledge that makes it work. Government sets standards and coordinates.
Hoi An Eco Hub holds these relationships together — a place to see material flows, test pathways, train operators and collect evidence. Infrastructure without relationships goes underused. Partnerships without operating capacity don’t last. A durable system needs both.
How it works
1. Prevent waste through operational redesign. Waste audits trace materials through procurement, kitchens, housekeeping, rooms and events — so businesses can cut avoidable items and redesign delivery.
2. Build reuse and refill as real services. Refillables Đong Đầy delivers household and hospitality products through refill and reusable models — which means solving for containers, cleaning, quality, pricing and enough recurring demand to make it work.
3. Build a specific pathway for each material. Different materials need different partners and end uses:
- Soap For Hope, with Diversey and partner hotels, collects used guest soap and reprocesses it for children’s centres, medical posts and communities in need. We have recovered about 1 ton of soaps since 2018.
- Linens For Life, with Diversey and partner hotels, routes retired hotel textiles into local sewing and upcycling. We have recovered about 2 ton of linens since 2018.
- Making Soap from Used Cooking Oil (technically transferred from SAPO Hoi An) turns collected kitchen oil into biodegradable soap.
- Coffee Briques turns spent coffee grounds from cafés and hotels into fuel briquettes designed for rural households — better-burning than the wood stoves that usually affect women’s and elders’ health.
Each one proves the same pattern: separation, collection, processing, quality control, income, and a real end product.
4. Reconnect organics with farms and soil. Organic waste is the largest share of Hội An’s waste stream — and the most damaging when mixed with everything else. Prevention comes first: UNEP estimates food loss and waste drives 8–10% of global emissions. Beyond that, GYC and REED design separation, collection and processing pathways for kitchen and landscape materials that farms can actually use — the direct link to Closed-loop Farming & Agroecology.
5. Build the system around dignified work. In Vietnam, informal workers collect over 30% of recyclable plastic — up to 90% of them women, by UNDP. Waste workers, women’s groups and farmers aren’t beneficiaries at the end of a project. They’re the system. They need recognised roles, fair pay, equipment, protection and a voice in how it runs.
6. Turn operations into learning and responsible travel. At Hoi An Eco Hub, students, businesses and visitors follow real material flows and take part in sorting and processing on site — the learning layer for Community Schools for Regeneration, and the entry point for REwild’s Travel with Purpose.
From circular to regenerative
Circularity isn’t only about keeping material out of landfill. Done well, it repairs relationships a linear system severed — between businesses and suppliers, food and soil, waste workers and decision-making, tourism and local capacity.
The harder question: is the place building more capacity to adapt? Fewer disposables entering the destination. Biological resources feeding healthier soil. Local operators gaining real roles. Businesses sharing responsibility for what their services create. Government, community and private actors learning to operate together.
Tourism can’t solve Hội An’s waste problem alone. But its purchasing power, responsibility and visitor economy can back the people already solving it.
What we track
Not just people trained or kilograms collected — change at five connected levels: upstream prevention, operational performance, local circular value, capability and justice for the people running the system, and destination capacity to coordinate and fund it together.
How this connects
Circular Tourism & Zero Waste is one of three place-based operating systems. It feeds biological resources into Closed-loop Farming & Agroecology, and its soil amendments support the nursery behind Floodplain Agro-ecosystem Restoration. Community Schools for Regeneration is where local workers, operators, businesses and traveling students build circular skill in working with these materials. Regenerative Tourism channels visitors and partners in — and directs their demand, finance and relationships back into the work.
Work with us
- Tourism businesses: redesign procurement, guest services and material pathways.
- Government and destination organisations: build the standards and public investment reliable local circular services need.
- Schools, universities, researchers: learn inside a live system, or contribute research and design.
- Tourism and learning partners: connect visitors to credible, community-led practice through Travel with Purpose.
- Technical, producer and funding partners: help build the operational links that make solutions last.