Background
Organic waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams globally. When poorly managed, it contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, water and soil pollution, and the loss of valuable nutrients and energy. At the same time, it offers enormous potential for resource recovery and reuse (RRR) through options such as composting, anaerobic digestion, bioenergy production, biochar, alternative proteins and other circular bioeconomy (CBE) solutions. Selecting the most suitable valorisation pathway, however, is far from straightforward. Decision-makers face multiple, often conflicting trade-offs, uncertainty in local data, and a lack of accessible tools to evaluate technical, economic, environmental, and social impacts. These gaps often lead to sub-optimal investments or the under-utilisation of promising resource recovery options. WasteWise was developed to respond to this need. It is a multi-criteria decision support system that provides a user-friendly, data-driven platform for assessing and selecting context-appropriate CBE business models. The tool estimates resource (waste) potential, supports rapid assessment of suitable sites and locations for RRR interventions, identifies appropriate valorisation technologies and ranks alternative business models using established multi-criteria decision methods. Users can modify inputs, test scenarios, analyse trade-offs and visualise data through an interactive dashboard. Designed for application across the Global South and other data-scarce contexts, WasteWise empowers planners, investors, and policymakers to make evidence-based, transparent, and locally relevant decisions to accelerate the transition to circular resource management.
Objectives:
- Validate and refine WasteWise through stakeholder feedback on data inputs, evaluation criteria, weighting parameters and interface usability in the Viet Nam context.
- Demonstrate the tool’s functionality and decision-making capabilities, showing how multi-criteria analysis can guide resource estimation, site screening, and the selection of circular bioeconomy business models in diverse contexts.
- Identify priority use cases in Viet Nam across agro-industrial and rural contexts.
- Strengthen collaboration and knowledge exchange among government, private sector actors, academia and development partners to support scalable organic waste valorisation and circular bioeconomy pathways.
Draft Agenda
Date: 31 March 2026
Time: 08:30 – 13:00 (GMT+7)
Location: C1, Green One UN House, 304 Kim Ma, Ngoc Ha, Hanoi
| Time | Agenda | Responsibility |
| 8:30 – 09:00 | Registration & Welcome Coffee | Organizer |
| 09:00 – 09:15 | Opening Remarks & Workshop Objectives | § Mr. Vu Thai Truong, Head of Climate Change, Environment and Energy Unit, UNDP Viet Nam
§ Representative from IWMI |
| 9:15 – 9:30 | Spotlight Presentation:
§ Policy Setting: Advancing Resource Circularity & Emerging Circular Bioeconomy in Viet Nam |
§ Mr. Nguyen Anh Phong, Deputy Director General, Institute of Strategy, Policy of Agriculture and Environment (ISPAE) |
| 9:30 – 09:50 | Spotlight Presentation:
§ The current context of baseline cultivation practices for rice, coffee, and catfish value chain in Vietnam |
§ Mr. Vu Duong Quynh, Institute of Agricultural Environment (IAE) |
| 09:50 – 10:00 | Q&A | |
| 10:00 – 10:10 | Tea Break and Group Photo | Organizer |
| 10:10 – 10:15 | Introduction of the Agri-CE Hub website | § UNDP |
| 10:15 – 10:45 | Introduction of the WasteWise tool
Introduction to the tool’s purpose, design, architecture and multi-criteria approach Interactive Validation Session § Review of evaluation criteria (technical, economic, environmental and social). § Discussion on weighting preferences in the Vietnamese context. § Feedback on usability and policy alignment. |
§ Tosin Somorin, International Water Management Institute (IWMI) |
| 10:45 – 11:15 | Open Discussions: Data and Potential Use Cases in Vietnam
Roadmap discussion (pilot application opportunities, institutional anchoring, capacity building needs and data-sharing partnerships) Where could WasteWise add the most value (policy, investment screening, municipal planning, private sector feasibility, etc.)? |
§ Facilitator: UNDP, IWMI |
| 11:15 – 11:25 | Group Presenting & Discussing | § Facilitator: IWMI, IAE |
| 11:25 – 11:35 | Distribute the set of questionnaires for all stakeholders | § Solomie Gebrezgabher, International Water Management Institute (IWMI) |
| 11:35 – 11:45 | Wrap-Up, Reflections & Close | Organizer |
