Since 2013, the People's Committee of Son La province has approved over 200 environmental impact assessment reports and granted four environmental licenses for investment projects, production facilities, and service providers. The quality of appraisal of administrative procedures in the field of environment has been improved, ensuring compliance with legal regulations and the one-stop-shop mechanism in handling administrative procedures.

Son La has established and put into operation three mineral exploitation industrial zones and clusters, mainly minerals for common construction materials such as limestone, sandstone, sand and gravel; along with establishments processing agricultural products like sugarcane, tapioca starch and coffee. Every year, the People's Committees of the province, and districts and Son La city have set up inspection and supervision teams to observe the compliance with regulations on environmental protection and water resources for agricultural product processing establishments.

As a result, waste collection and treatment activities were controlled, thus reducing risks of environmental pollution. In addition, authorities at all levels and agencies have focused on controlling and monitoring environmental protection, assessing the level of environmental pollution by production facilities and areas with high risk of causing environmental pollution or those causing environmental pollution for a long time with many complaints from voters, media agencies and people for timely settlement in accordance with regulations.

For the control of pollution from agricultural production, residues of pesticides and rice straw burning, districts and Son La city have dispatched 5,000 personnel to collect nearly 60,000 kg of plant protection drug packaging. The province has 4,775 storage tanks for plant protection drug packaging, meeting the demand. Many new models have been launched, such as the "Exchanging the packaging of pesticides after use for food" programme in Hat Lot commune, Mai Son district and Chieng Hac commune, Yen Chau district. Through the model, 1,550 kg of plant protection drug packaging were collected, with an equivalent sum of more than 30 million VND (1,245 USD), and 47,500 kg of plant protection drug packaging after use were transported for treatment in line with regulations.

For medical waste, Son La has 36 medical facilities, including 20 general hospitals at provincial and district levels equipped with medical wastewater treatment systems that meet requirements. The remaining 16 facilities mainly perform preventive medicine functions with few medical examination and treatment activities, generating a small amount of medical wastewater which is treated by settling tanks and disinfectant chemical ChloraminB.

Regarding solid waste treatment and hazardous waste management, Son La has completed seven solid waste treatment projects, including domestic solid waste landfills in Mai Son, Yen Chau and Bac Yen districts; and burning technology in Song Ma, Van Ho, Sop Cop and Thuan Chau districts, with a total capital of nearly 122 billion VND (5 million USD). Some projects have proposed investment in waste treatment and energy such as a solid waste treatment plant of the ASEAN Environment Investment Joint Stock Company; a complex of pollution treatment and recovery of methane for electricity generation in the Son La city - Thuan Chau - Mai Son - Muong La cluster; and a similar complex in the Moc Chau - Van Ho cluster.

By 2030, Son La strives to have 100% of industrial parks, production, business and service establishments installing automatic and continuous wastewater and emission monitoring systems, directly transmitting data to the provincial Department of Natural Resources and Environment. It also plans to carry out periodic, automatic and continuous wastewater monitoring of industrial parks and publicize monitoring results according to regulations.