How Much Further Does Green Express Delivery Have to Go?

Under the dual carbon strategy, the problem of excessive express packaging is still common. Data show that China's express delivery industry generates more than 9 million tonnes of waste paper and 1.8 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, posing challenges to environmental protection. Excessive express packaging may seem like an "old refrain", but behind it the industry's chronic problems remain. How to put circular packaging into practice and carry "green" through to the end has become a difficult problem facing the express delivery industry.

When can "excessive packaging" "travel light"?

Mr. Zhang, who lives in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, recently ran into some sweet trouble: his family sent a lot of fresh produce from his hometown. Looking at the carton wrapped tightly in layer after layer, he told the reporter: "I'm very happy to receive the parcel from home, but unwrapping it is such a hassle. The large carton has a thick plastic film wrapped around it and fixed with tape, and inside is a foam plastic box, also bound tightly with tape. It really is sturdy, but it's also such a waste."

What Mr. Zhang experienced happens often when sending parcels. Protection is the primary function of express packaging, preventing damage caused by handling and squeezing during long-distance transport. At the same time, express packaging also has the role of keeping goods attractive and winning buyers' goodwill. A survey shows that China's express delivery industry generates more than 9 million tonnes of waste paper and 1.8 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, bringing huge challenges to environmental protection.

Targeted Measures: Sustained Efforts in Packaging Governance

As early as 2009, China issued relevant policies to carry out special governance of express packaging, and subsequently issued a series of policies to regulate it. In September 2020, China clearly proposed the goals of "carbon peaking" by 2030 and "carbon neutrality" by 2060, advocating a "green, eco-friendly and low-carbon" lifestyle, accelerating the pace of carbon emission reduction and achieving economic development and green transformation in parallel.

This year, the State Post Bureau is pressing ahead. At a special press conference held on 22 February, it clearly stated that it would implement the "9218" green development project, accelerate the green and low-carbon transformation of express packaging, and achieve a 90% rate of e-commerce express parcels not being repackaged by the end of the year; it would deepen the two governance efforts on excessive packaging and plastic pollution, reach 1 billion mail items using recyclable express packaging, and recycle and reuse 800 million corrugated cartons in good condition. After the policy was issued, postal bureaus in various places responded actively, and many provinces and cities including Guangdong, Shanxi and Heilongjiang made relevant regulations on express packaging, such as limiting the width of the tape used for packing and lowering the proportion of non-degradable plastic packaging bags used…

With the rapid development of e-commerce, China's express delivery volume has advanced by leaps and bounds, growing 120-fold from 1 billion items in 2006 to 120 billion items in 2022. According to data released by the State Post Bureau, in January–April this year the postal industry completed a cumulative total of 46.80 billion items of delivery business, up 13.7% year on year. Of this, express delivery volume totalled 37.1 billion items, up 17.0% year on year. While driving economic take-off, the huge express delivery volume has brought enormous environmental pollution problems and caused the waste of large amounts of recyclable resources; the non-recyclable tape used each year could circle the equator 425 times.

Recycling 1 tonne of waste paper can produce about 0.85 tonnes of new paper, save 17 large trees, save 3 cubic metres of landfill space, use 240 kg less soda ash, reduce pollution emissions from papermaking by 75% and save 40%–50% of the energy consumed in papermaking, and each sheet of paper can be recycled at least twice. Yet China's waste paper recovery rate is only 20%–30%, with 6 million tonnes of waste paper lost every year, equivalent to wasting 1–3 million mu of forest resources.

Active Response Demonstrates Corporate Responsibility

Shifting from extensive to intensive development of the circular economy is a major issue facing the express packaging industry, and express delivery companies need to shoulder important responsibility in this. When companies recycle old packaging boxes, part can be used directly and part can be processed centrally to save costs.

JD Logistics launched its carton recycling programme in 2016, with recycling covering JD express stations nationwide. JD Logistics' circular packaging business relies on its integrated forward-and-reverse logistics system to complete recovery and recycling: after customers sign for parcels in person, couriers take the packaging back to the outlet and then return it to the warehouse via reverse-route vehicles for reuse. To implement the "9218" project, JD Logistics vigorously promotes factory-direct packaging and issues platform incentives to guide upstream brand companies to transform towards green packaging at the source, with integrated structural design for factory packaging and express packaging; and relies on big data and algorithms for packaging type selection and optimisation and intelligent recommendations for consumables to improve packaging space utilisation and avoid excessive packaging;

it develops new packaging materials to replace traditional single-use plastics, such as paper substituting for plastic and reusable express packaging bags; carries out C-end circular packaging sharing pilots; and encourages couriers to recycle cartons for reuse. "JD Logistics will promote standardised reusable boxes and a shared recycling model in the future, establish end-point recycling infrastructure to solve the difficulty of collecting empty boxes, and have a third-party circular packaging service platform collect them and allocate resources uniformly to achieve rapid turnover of circular packaging," said Duan Yanjian, head of JD Logistics' Green Stream Project, in an interview with a reporter from Modern Logistics News.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China Post Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Post) fully launched its green initiative, carrying out three major projects — green packaging, green transport and green finance — and six demonstration actions including green e-commerce and green buildings, continuously improving its green development system. Since the beginning of this year, China Post has issued the "14th Five-Year Development Plan for Green Postal Services", requiring the promotion of the industry's "9218" key project, deepening the two special governance efforts on excessive packaging and plastic pollution, reaching 100 million mail items using recyclable packaging nationwide and recycling and reusing 80 million corrugated cartons nationwide.

Since the beginning of this year, the Shijiazhuang Branch of China Post Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Shijiazhuang Post) has handled an average of 580,000 express items per day, up 9.3% from last year. The promotion of green express packaging has not only been effective in environmental protection but has also continued to develop in terms of reduction and recyclability, bringing both quantitative and qualitative improvements to the postal enterprise's economy.

Speaking about Shijiazhuang's implementation of circular application of express packaging, the head of Shijiazhuang Post said in an interview with a reporter from Modern Logistics News: "In 2022, Shijiazhuang Post cumulatively recycled and reused 1.0624 million corrugated cartons, and all 298 postal outlets (including agency points) and 36 collection and delivery stations across the city are equipped with express packaging waste recycling devices, with enhanced poster and advertising video publicity at outlets; at the same time, it called on 3,000 community stations to take part in carton recycling publicity activities.

" He said that in the future Shijiazhuang Post will further promote the green transformation of express packaging and green transport transformation and advance green finance and green low-carbon development; by the end of 2023, the proportion of degradable plastic packaging bags and plastic tape used citywide will reach over 75%, and by the end of 2024 the city will fully achieve the plastic ban goal.

A Century-Long Undertaking: The Road to Green Packaging Has a Long Way to Go

For companies recycling express cartons, the practical problem is how to achieve the reverse flow of express packaging. Recyclables from express packaging are large in quantity and scattered, so recycling is somewhat difficult; outlet-based recycling is a relatively easy method of recovery. Customers often tear off packaging right after collecting their parcels, and with publicity from outlet staff, their willingness to take part in carton recycling activities is relatively strong. However, collecting cartons after delivery by couriers and recycling cartons at community stations are somewhat difficult; out of privacy protection or consideration of economic returns, customers and station operators mostly prefer not to hand express cartons directly to express companies for recycling.

In the process of making express packaging greener, the choice of packaging materials is also a key link. At present, packaging materials mostly use cartons and foam plastics as cushioning materials, which are characterised by low prices and high resistance. As outer packaging, cartons can increase people's willingness to participate in recycling by strengthening the manufacturing process and increasing costs. Compared with products — especially high-priced products such as ceramics, glass and electronic devices — cushioning materials such as foam plastics are far too cheap to use, so in order to reduce cargo damage merchants usually choose to use double the amount of cushioning material to increase packaging safety.

Lu Fude, Associate Professor at the School of Packaging and Materials Engineering of Hunan University of Technology, said: "Achieving green packaging materials is a long and arduous task. First, it is necessary to promote and implement standardisation in the packaging industry and seek reasonable packaging methods for goods of different specifications and price ranges; at the same time, merchants also need to take responsibility for their own products, improve product strength and assist in the reduction-oriented design of express packaging. Second, research tackling remains a weighty responsibility: we need systematic consideration across disciplines such as mechanics and materials science to find a balance between the safety and the greenness of packaging materials."

Lu Fude also talked about degradable materials, saying: "Whether existing degradable materials are truly pollution-free remains open to question. The decomposition of these materials still causes some harm to the environment and takes a certain amount of time. Finding a material that emits no pollution at all from production to decomposition still requires the unremitting efforts of researchers."

—This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn); original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-379425.html