Disposable takeaway plastic packaging: if you can't use it, you can't use it, and if you can use it less, you can use it less

Reporter of this newspaper | Snow white

Bag-in-box, box-in-bag, even if you choose not to use cutlery when placing an order, occasionally you will be stuffed. The rapid development of the food delivery industry has made our lives easier, but for consumers, the burden of single-use plastic waste caused by food delivery has not been reduced.

Recently, the environmental protection agency to get rid of plastic and the Guangdong Provincial Association of Circular Economy and Comprehensive Utilization of Resources jointly held an online seminar on "Promoting the Comprehensive Treatment of Takeaway Plastic Pollution".

Environmental pressures follow us

Luo Tiansheng, Deputy Director of the Guangdong Association of Circular Economy and Comprehensive Utilization of Resources, said: "China's food delivery market is growing rapidly, accounting for nearly half of the global food delivery market turnover, nearly 1.5 times that of the 'US market'. It can be expected that the mainland food delivery market still has huge growth potential in the future. ”

The development of the food delivery industry brings great commercial and economic potential, but it also comes with corresponding environmental pressures. In order to deal with the problem of plastic pollution in takeaways, several major takeaway platforms in China have made a lot of efforts and attempts in the past few years.

In the internationally accepted "3R principles of waste management", the first place in the order is "source reduction", which Ding Yi, the director of the plastic reduction project of getting rid of plastic shackles, likens it to "turning off the faucet". Ding Yi said: "No need for tableware" has become an important starting point for reducing plastic waste in the takeaway industry. However, there is still room for improvement in the proportion of "no cutlery" orders, and there are still challenges in the implementation process.

In addition to "no cutlery", Meituan is also trying to explore other ways to reduce plastic at the source and recycle from other angles. "Since 2018, Meituan has begun to explore the recycling process, from the initial pilot of single-point office buildings, to the first large-scale urban lunch box recycling in Xiamen and Shanghai in 2021, and has successively expanded to Hangzhou, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Beijing and other places," said Zhou Yan, senior manager of Meituan Tsingshan Project. Meituan works with the government and companies engaged in back-end recycling to build a city-level recycling system. At present, 14 provinces and 15 cities have carried out large-scale recycling, and more than 17,000 tons of plastic lunch boxes have been recycled. ”

In addition to reducing the amount from the source, many solution providers have also turned their thinking to "substitution", and the degradable plastics, which are now widely used in takeaway plastic packaging, are also being promoted and used as "environmentally friendly materials" across the country. However, the "Environmental Impact Assessment and Policy Support Research Project Report on Degradable Plastics" jointly released by Tsinghua University and Sinopec in 2022 shows that 96.77% of degradable plastics go to landfill or incineration, and the proportion that can actually enter industrial compost and anaerobic fermentation treatment is less than 0.01%.

Similar to biodegradable plastics, non-woven bags are also widely used by takeaway businesses as alternative "eco-friendly" materials. "Non-woven fabric" is a weaving method, and the main material of some non-woven fabrics is still plastic. According to Zhang Miao, director of Shanghai Pudong Yike Recycling Technology Promotion Center, many takeaway packaging bags are becoming thicker and heavier, and some packaging is playing a role in heat preservation, and the plastic content is increasing instead of decreasing.

Ding Yi said frankly: "From the perspective of plastic reduction, we believe that reducing the amount at the source and reducing any form of disposable packaging is an important principle of plastic reduction. Disposable packaging, including non-woven packaging, is of course the best if it can be used without it, and reduced if it can be reduced. ”

The promotion of recycled lunch boxes is still difficult

In 2022, the "Research Report on the Economic and Environmental Benefits of Takeaway Circular Lunch Boxes - Based on the Case of Shunde Campus of Southern Medical University" released by Getting Rid of Plastic Constraints and Shenzhen University and Beijing Peisi Green Technology Development Center shows that every 7 times of recycling during the operation of the Shuangti Recycling Lunch Box can offset the environmental impact of the 1 disposable lunch box in the five categories of indicators. As of May 2022, the average number of recycling times of lunch boxes on campus is 63 times, effectively reducing the burden of garbage disposal on campus.

Recirculating lunch boxes are still in their infancy in mainland China, and most of them appear in specific closed scenes. Meituan has long experienced the difficulty of implementing the circular lunch box model. Zhou Yan said: "First, recycled lunch boxes need to solve a series of problems such as recycling, disinfection, and redistribution. Due to the large variety of Chinese food, its packaging is very 'non-standard (i.e., non-standard)', how to solve the problem of lunch box recycling in non-standard mode and under the premise of huge total quantity is still challenging. ”

Despite the difficulties, Duan Huabo, an associate professor at the School of Environment at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, is still optimistic: "Recycling lunch boxes must still be promoted, because this is an important measure to reduce waste, especially plastic, there is no doubt about it." ”

Talking about how to do it, Duan Huabo put forward two future directions, one is to carry out pilot projects in closed, high-density scenarios and key cities such as campuses and parks, and the other is to distinguish the "small cycle" based on the takeaway cycle model, and the "big cycle" system that includes the entire social packaging category.

When both large and small cycles are established and perfected, the scenario will be realized: consumers order at home, and when they are finished, the packaging will be handed over to a third-party recycling agency or recycling system. The system will not only be limited to recycling lunch boxes, but also recycling most consumer product packaging for fresh fruits and e-commerce platforms, and uniformly redistributing packaging to the market to reduce and share costs.

There is an urgent need for a comprehensive and integrated governance programme

How to make the circulation mode of catering takeaway break through the scene restrictions as soon as possible and win a larger market share?

Zhang Miao said: "There should be more policy support from the perspective of recycling. Zhou Yan also put forward a similar appeal from the perspective of enterprises: "In terms of policy formulation, industries and enterprises engaged in low-value recyclables can be supported, including improving the recycling system of low-value recyclables." At the same time, to strengthen the publicity and advocacy of residents, in fact, a simple cleaning action may be a matter of seconds, but it is very important for the overall back-end recycling link. ”

Ding Yi said: "The establishment of the recycling system is very important, and at the same time look forward to policies can help us do better in source reduction, in addition to strengthening the supervision of the implementation of 'no tableware', we can refer to the successful experience of the mainland in express plastic pollution, take source reduction as the basic principle, and improve the relevant policies and systems, establish supporting measures, and cooperate with specific policy objectives, clarify the leading authorities, implement specific measures to pilot, and lead the industry to implement policy objectives." ”

No single strategy can effectively reverse the current plastic pollution situation, and plastic pollution in the food delivery industry urgently needs a comprehensive and comprehensive treatment plan. The report, "Research on the Comprehensive Treatment Plan of Takeaway Plastic Pollution", jointly released by the Guangdong Association of Circular Economy and Comprehensive Utilization of Resources and the environmental protection agency Get Rid of Plastic, puts forward strategic recommendations for the control of takeaway plastic pollution and action suggestions for different stakeholders.

According to the report, the mainland's plastic pollution control has entered the stage of systematic and full-chain treatment, and the plastic pollution control of takeaway also needs to cover the whole process from source reduction to end treatment, and follow the priority of waste management. The principle of governance should first directly reduce the use of single-use plastics by increasing the proportion of "no cutlery" orders and fully implementing them, minimizing unnecessary packaging, developing and adopting reusable packaging systems for unavoidable takeaway packaging, incorporating low-value recyclables into low-value recyclables for sorting and recycling, and finally replacing traditional plastic packaging with materials after comprehensively assessing the environmental impact of the whole life cycle of packaging materials.

At the same time, the report also proposes that in the process of governance, we should focus on the use of direct reduction and recycling lunch box and other source reduction measures, introduce an extended producer responsibility system, and use the collected funds to support innovative recycling of disposable lunch boxes on a large scale, and consolidate the governance responsibility of the platform, and supervise and manage the plastic reduction actions of platform ecosystem participants through the platform's unique hub function and data and technical advantages.