China National Radio Beijing May 19th (Reporter Du Ximeng) According to China National Radio's "News Panorama", in the past one or two years, various food delivery apps have developed in full swing. Pick up your phone, move your fingers and someone will deliver the food to your door. You don't have to wash the dishes and clean up after eating and drinking. It can be said that it saves water, gas and time. It is no wonder that consumers are increasingly favoring this way of dining. But I don't know if everyone has noticed the packaging boxes and bags of these takeaways while enjoying the convenience.

Someone has simply calculated the account. According to the data of the three major food delivery platforms, Meituan, Ele.me, and Baidu Takeaway, the average daily order volume is about 7 million orders. Even if only one plastic bag is used for a takeaway order, and each plastic bag is 0.06 square meters, the total area reaches 420,000 square meters, which can cover 59 football fields.

What packaging materials are generally included in a takeaway? The reporter asked a deliveryman from an online meal ordering platform and learned that in addition to two or three plastic lunch boxes and one or two layers of plastic bags, there are also disposable chopsticks, plastic spoons, plastic soup cups, etc. According to Sheng Min, secretary general of the Recycled Plastics Branch of the China Renewable Resources Recycling Association, these materials themselves do have recycling value, but the recycling price is not high. The pure polypropylene (PP) transparent lunch box currently used as the mainstream lunch box is one of the higher quality plastic materials, and the purchase price is only 2 or 3 yuan per kilogram. At the same time, after being used as a takeaway tableware, it is basically impossible to enter the recycling chain.

Sheng Min said that because it is loaded with catering food, it generally will not enter the recycling cycle system, because there will be oil stains, vegetable soup, and rice attached to it. It is not that you can pour it out and it will be fine, so it can only enter the garbage disposal system. From the recycling situation, whether it is a scavenger or a recycling company, he generally only chooses simpler types of products such as Coke bottles at the front end, and lunch boxes like this cannot be recycled.

Are lunch boxes that have been loaded with food definitely not recyclable? Sheng Min said that it is only possible if there is sufficient cleaning and strict classification and recycling. For example, in Japan, the front-end processing of takeaway plastic lunch boxes is borne by the person who orders the food. After these lunch boxes are used, the person who orders the food must be responsible for the cleaning work and send them to the designated recycling point. From the current point of view, it is difficult for China to meet the above requirements in a short period of time with millions of takeaway lunch boxes every day, and there is a lack of professional companies engaged in front-end recycling.

So how much pressure do plastic lunch boxes and packaging that enter the garbage disposal system bring to the environment? Sheng Min introduced that for plastic waste, incineration and landfill are still the two mainstream methods, and harmless treatment can be achieved.

Sheng Min said that before the rise of takeaways, this kind of thing has always existed. For example, if you take your food home after eating out, it will also go into the city's garbage disposal system after being discarded. From a technical point of view, there is no problem with harmless treatment of this kind of thing.

In contrast, what is more troublesome is the growth rate and quantity of this kind of garbage.

Although the advocacy of "waste reduction" and "waste classification" has lasted for nearly ten years, as an industry insider, Liu Quan, general manager of a Beijing recycling company, feels that it is still just a slogan. The most troublesome thing is that as a big city where takeout is more popular, it did not consider possible problems and countermeasures at the beginning.

Liu Quan said that the attention paid to garbage is seriously lagging behind. At present, the construction of garbage treatment facilities in big cities in China is very insufficient, and the construction speed is far behind the growth of garbage.

Take Beijing as an example. According to official data last year, the total amount of garbage entering incineration and landfill was 7.9 million tons, 7.33 million tons the year before, and 6.72 million tons the year before. It can be seen that the growth rate is very large. The speed of transformation of this kind of network life is really very fast. While developing this, we should also consider the negative impact. For example, the increase in garbage is a reality, so you have to increase the investment in treatment facilities and increase the efforts to deal with it. If you deal with it well, you should consider such a countermeasure at the beginning.

As takeout is gradually becoming a lifestyle for more and more people, how to reduce the garbage pollution caused by takeout has indeed become a difficult problem that requires consumers, merchants, takeout platforms and recycling industries to think together.

In fact, express packaging is similar to takeout. Data shows that the express delivery industry uses 17 billion meters of tape and 8.2 billion plastic bags every year. In the industry's view, the cost of these two types of plastic packaging is not high, and consumers hardly have to pay too much, and the pressure of processing is basically borne by society. Some experts believe that while exploring more effective and feasible recycling methods, a subsidy mechanism for the recycling of waste plastics should be established.

Chang Jiwen, deputy director of the Institute of Resources and Environmental Policy of the Development Research Center of the State Council, suggested that in line with the principle of "whoever benefits, pays", takeout merchants, platforms and consumers should "pay" for the disposal of takeout garbage and compensate for the costs of recycling.

Chang Jiwen said that the best way is to use recyclable and recyclable packaging materials. At present, the country is preparing to amend the circular economy promotion law. The next step should be to reduce the amount of packaging materials in the takeaway and express delivery industries and make binding regulations on resource utilization. Economic means should also be used to let consumers make choices. Disposable lunch boxes are difficult to recycle and companies have little profit. If a fee can be added, this can also force consumers to choose reusable tableware boxes.

The "13th Five-Year Plan" has clearly stated that it will limit the use of disposable items, improve the recycling network of renewable resources, and strengthen the connection between the classification and recycling of domestic waste and the recycling of renewable resources. Some places have also begun to try to conduct pilot projects for the classification and recycling of this new type of domestic waste.

Li Dayong, director of the Publicity Department of the Hefei Municipal Urban Management Bureau, said that we started a pilot project in March this year to classify and recycle these plastic garbage and glass product packaging cartons. We give material rewards to citizens who actively classify and recycle garbage. We want to make full and effective use of these resources that are actually misplaced in this way.

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