Delivery services align with green development
While the rapid development of express delivery services is making life in China easier and more convenient, the huge amounts of materials used for packaging are putting extensive pressure on the environment. In response to the country’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality, couriers are adopting new measures to contribute, experts said.
For example recyclable express boxes used by YTO Express are becoming increasingly popular in Hainan province.
The various-sized boxes differ from ordinary ones as they contain no glue, metal staples or adhesive tape. They are also sealed with special clips.
“The recyclable packing cases can be folded into flat cardboard for recycling or storage purposes,” said Li Changxiang, in charge of YTO Express’s network service in Hainan. “Although they cost more than conventional counterparts, they can be reused several times.”
By the end of last year YTO Express had replaced more than 90% of its plastic woven bags with recyclable bags, and more than 90% of its adhesive tapes used for sealing boxes have been slimmed down to minimize waste.
All these efforts are to make packaging greener and recyclable, which is also in line with China’s commitment to peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, experts said.
“China has become the world’s greatest consumer of e-commerce parcels,” said Yang Daqing, a logistics industry expert.
“More than 83 billion parcels were delivered nationwide last year, and the figure is expected to swell to 95 billion units this year”.
Every year, express companies use mountains of packaging material including plastic bags, cardboard boxes, filling and adhesive tape, most of which are non-biodegradable and place major pressure on the environment, Yang said.
The Chinese government is now urging the express delivery industry to use green packaging as well as reduce package waste.
On Dec 14, eight central government departments, including the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Post Bureau, published a paper that included measures such as offering incentives to businesses and setting unified standards for green packaging to ensure compliance among industry participants.
The paper set a goal of 85% of products arriving at courier warehouses in a condition suitable for distribution by next year.
JD Logistics, a unit of the Chinese e-commerce company JD, became the country’s first logistics enterprise to set a carbon reduction target. JD Logistics said it would halve its carbon emissions by 2030 compared with 2019 levels.
As early as 2017, JD Logistics launched an end-to-end green and environmentally-friendly plan to implement low carbon and energy saving results in various procedures including packaging, storage and transportation.
By December, recyclable packages had been used a total of 110 million times in its green campaign.
SF Holding Co., Ltd. has also progressively carried out its green packaging plan. Through technological transformation, is has saved about 26,000 tons of paper and about 8,000 tons of plastics last year while cutting carbon emissions by 70,000 tons in total, the company said.
Likewise, Best Inc. has launched a green logistics scheme throughout its business network including in operations, packaging and transport.
It has widely applied reusable bags embedded with chips at its major transit centers. In comparison with conventional woven bags that can only be used twice at most, the traceable bags can be reused more than 40 times, said Wang Bo, director of network operations at Best Express.
“Green logistics is backed by the enhancement of technology, efficiency and operational capability.”
The advancement of green packaging is taking place throughout the complete express delivery service process. Therefore, the industry could not go green without the participation of all related parties.
Authorities have established clear packaging requirements for both courier service providers and customers.