Meituan Dianping steps up recycling drive amid deluge of plastic waste in China

The food delivery giant’s move follows Beijing’s plan to cut the production and use of plastic in the country over the next five years

The amount of waste accumulated by China’s e-commerce and express delivery sectors could reach 41.3 million tonnes by 2025

Reading Time:2 minutes

Chinese food delivery giant Meituan Dianping has sharpened its focus on building an environmental value chain for takeaway delivery. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 5:15pm, 1 Sep 2020Updated: 11:34pm, 1 Sep 2020

Meituan Dianping, China’s leading e-commerce platform for services, is ratcheting up efforts to build a green supply chain for packaging, as the world’s second-largest economy combats a growing plastic waste problem.

The Beijing-based company said on Monday that its Blue Mountain Project, an environmental protection initiative launched in 2017, will establish more programmes to recycle packaging waste across the country.

“In the next five years, the Blue Mountain Project will continue to focus on building an environmental value chain for takeaway delivery and promote the upgrade of the packaging recycling industry, while encouraging broader public participation,” said Yang Bicong, secretary general at the corporate social responsibility committee of Meituan Waimai, in a statement on Monday. Meituan Waimai is the food delivery operation of Hong Kong-listed Meituan Dianping.

The initiative has established about 350 pilot programmes since it was launched, according to the company’s statement. It said these programmes have successfully recycled 74 per cent of takeaway boxes gathered from office buildings, communities and campuses in various major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Volunteers with Meituan Dianping’s Blue Mountain Project make gadgets from recycled food packaging materials during an event in Beijing in June of last year. Photo: Handout

Meituan Dianping’s move to step up its green initiative over the next five years follows Beijing’s plan to cut the production and use of plastic in the country over that same period.