No plastic, fantastic? In 2020, faced with surging amounts of plastic waste, China started implementing a ban on single-use plastic bags, first in large cities, followed in 2022 by smaller towns. That year, a report by the United Nations Environment Programme had estimated that each individual in China used around 1 095 single-use plastic bags annually.
China's food delivery industry, the largest in the world by a wide margin, larger on its own than the six main Southeast Asian markets combined, has been amplifying the waste crisis. In 2020, urban food delivery alone generated 37 billion single-use plastic (SUP) containers, with most ending up in landfills and incinerators. Only a small fraction of food containers and tableware end up being recycled.
Green-nudge initiatives have been launched by giant take-out platforms Meituan and Ele.me to decrease waste produced by single-use cutlery, making customers opt in to receive disposable cutlery and setting up a no-cutlery default option.
However, in practice, many restaurants dealing with a large number of takeaway orders continue to include single-use cutlery in their delivery bags. This is done to cut risks of receiving a negative review that could lower the ranking on which restaurants depend for business on digital platforms.
The ban of single-use plastic bags has not brought entirely sustainable solutions either, as nonwoven bags replacing many of them are primarily composed of polypropylene, polyester and other petrochemical materials. Their greater durability is only an asset for sustainability if they end up being reused multiple times, which is rarely the case, as customers keep receiving bags with each new order.
Are you a European SME pioneering sustainable solutions for the F&B industry? Our new report gives you an overview of the market for waste reduction and recycling in China and guides you through market entry considerations.