Single day: The world’s largest shopping event or packaging waste?

Black Friday combines with Cyber ​​Monday (a phrase used to refer to the first Monday after Black Friday, the launch day for the online shopping season in the US between Thanksgiving and Christmas) along with Independence Day Dear (Singles’ Day) is the largest shopping event in the world, generating tens of billions of dollars in revenue each year.

But while the volume of shopping spikes is astounding, it means that the goods purchased will always come with plastic waste and a huge amount of packaging waste.

On last year’s Single Day, e-commerce portals in China generated more than 1.3 billion shipping orders, according to the China State Post – up about 25% from the previous year. That’s the equivalent of every American placing four orders in a day.

And each item shipped is wrapped in wrapping paper or plastic packaging, tape and cardboard boxes …

According to a new report from Greenpeace and Break Free From Plastic China, the volume of packaging materials used by China’s e-commerce and express delivery industries reached 9.4 million tons in 2018 – an equivalent weight. 130 million adults.

This is not a new issue but it seems to be getting worse as Chinese e-commerce giants like Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo are looking to develop, reaching rural areas to find millions more customers that were previously untapped.

By Monday morning, just nine hours after Singles’ Day 2019, Alibaba generated more than $ 22 billion in revenue – two-thirds of last year’s total revenue.

The smartphone giant Huawei said it took just a minute to beat sales for the first day of November last year.

Its rival, Apple, took 10 minutes to beat its all-day sales on Alibaba’s Tmall last year.

According to Greepeace’s report, about 99% of delivery plastic packaging is not recycled in China. Instead, it is discarded in the same way as other common waste – is burned or dumped in landfills.

But now, China, a country of 1.4 billion people, is also beginning to become aware of the escalating waste problem and is also beginning to formulate more stringent recycling needs.

This year, Shanghai began asking residents to classify waste into four categories: kitchen waste, hazardous waste, recycled waste and residual waste.

Individuals who fail to do so will be subject to a fine of up to USD 29. Beijing is also experimenting with similar measures, installing facial recognition cameras on trash bins in some neighborhoods.

The Chinese central government has chosen Shanghai as an example of how to classify waste and is calling on other cities to learn from it.

Couriers and e-commerce companies have also emphasized their efforts in curbing waste.

Alibaba said Cainiao (a Chinese logistics company launched by the Alibaba Group) has linked shipping with other partners who have established tens of thousands of recycling stations across China to collect cardboard boxes. used.

JD.com said that since launching its green initiative in 2017, JD.com’s logistics department has reduced 27,000 tons of disposable packaging. At the same time, recyclable boxes have been deployed in more than 30 cities.

As China strives to recycle its vast amounts of waste, the rest of the world is also facing stringent export inspections into China.

After years of accepting plastic waste imported from the US, Australia, Japan and other countries, China stopped doing so earlier this year. Beijing is considering a plan to ban all solid waste imports early next year.