China's Express Packaging Push Turns to Slimming and Recycling: 90% No-Secondary-Packaging Goal Set for Year-End

CCTV.com News:

As mid-year e-commerce promotions get underway, roughly 400 million express parcels have been circulating nationwide each day since June. Reporters still found plenty of overpacking: boxes within boxes, plastic foam filling cartons, and products buried under multiple wrapping layers.

CCTV reporter Tang Ying:

These products came from various e-commerce platforms. Let us inspect the packaging. Opening one large parcel reveals two layers of foam film around tea; the shorter film measures 105 cm and the longer 165 cm. In practice, the shorter film alone could wrap the tea and protect it inside the box during transport.

The reporter estimated that the removed packaging volume was about five times the purchased product. Much of it cannot be reused, so it goes to waste collection stations and becomes a major part of household waste.

CCTV reporter Chen Qingbin:

At this community recycling station, cardboard boxes are the largest recyclable category, already sorted and stacked, alongside foam boxes and plastic items. Recyclers collect all recyclables at the station every day.

Staff said Tianjin currently has about 200 such stations, each processing around 5 tonnes of recyclables daily, with express packaging waste accounting for about 80%.

Innovative R&D: Green Packaging Overcomes Technical and Cost Barriers

China's express delivery sector handles an average of 350 million parcels and serves nearly 700 million user visits per day, ranking first globally for many consecutive years. Tackling excessive packaging is urgent and also essential for industry upgrading and sustainable development. The key to slimming packaging lies at the source and in design. How is recyclable green packaging R&D progressing, and where are the hurdles? The reporter visited the China Post Green Packaging Innovation Laboratory.

CCTV reporter Tang Ying:

This is the R&D site of the China Post Green Packaging Innovation Laboratory. Behind me, a packaging prototyping machine is producing samples from the R&D team's design drawings.

Gao Kang, packaging engineer at the China Post Green Packaging Laboratory:

After a box is glued, it undergoes drop, vibration and impact tests to verify protection for contents in real scenarios. If it fails, we first adjust the paper and increase grammage, then refine material selection, redraw drawings and repeat testing until requirements are met.

Besides cartons, frequently used express materials such as bubble wrap and tape also go through multiple test rounds. R&D staff said tape commonly used for wrapping is a key and difficult focus.

Kang Li, technical director of the China Post Green Packaging Laboratory:

Compared with conventional tape, degradable tape may reach only about 50% of the packing strength, while its cost is nearly two times higher.

To improve strength, Kang Li and colleagues ran countless tensile tests and monitored curves in real time. After nearly two years of effort, they launched a new fully biodegradable eco-friendly tape this year. During recycling, tape and carton need not be separated, and under suitable conditions the tape can degrade directly into water and carbon dioxide.

Yet at the Green Packaging Innovation Laboratory, the reporter found that many recyclable packaging boxes developed long ago are rarely seen or used in daily life.

Kang Li, technical director of the China Post Green Packaging Laboratory:

Its use scenarios are currently relatively fixed. It requires face-to-face signing so the box can be collected. If placed in a self-pickup locker, couriers find it hard to recover, and express companies face a relatively high loss rate, so we need to gradually build an intelligent management system.

Kang Li told the reporter that recyclable mail bag usage among China's postal enterprises has reached 96%. However, compared with the postal sector's tens-of-billions and the industry's hundreds-of-billions business volumes, end-of-logistics recyclable packaging still has much room to grow in usage volume and cycle counts.

Express Delivery Companies Explore Full-Process Greening

Express packaging must protect goods while avoiding waste. How can the two be balanced? The reporter's research found that more express logistics companies are paying attention to this issue and advancing full-process greening in various ways to help packaging slim down and reduce its burden.

At an express outlet in Yiwu, Zhejiang, a dedicated green shipping area is set up. Consumers can accumulate the number of outer express packages they bring in and redeem them for inter-city shipping fees. In transport, companies have replaced 9.6-meter box trucks with 15-meter to 17-meter high-capacity drop-and-hook trailers, cutting pollutant emissions per parcel by more than 70%. Following a transport vehicle, the reporter saw green smart eco-friendly bags at the sorting center.

Zhu Zhongchen, deputy manager of the HR and General Management Group at the ZTO Express Zhejiang Yiwu Center:

This bag has been cycled more than 110 times and is fitted with a chip, enabling automatic sorting within the system. With wider use of e-waybills, paper-related pollutant emissions in later transfer stages can be reduced by more than 60%. Basically all our items are now recycled, creating a closed loop that truly reflects core green environmental value.

At a postal processing center in Guizhou, many e-commerce products are starting to use a green recyclable Qingliu box. Unlike traditional cartons, this box needs no tape sealing, has a built-in locking buckle and carries only a self-adhesive address label.

Proportion of E-commerce Express Items Without Secondary Packaging Expected to Reach 90% by Year-End

As a major express delivery country, China's excessive packaging governance has long drawn public attention. As early as 2009, China carried out a special express packaging campaign. In April 2021, the State Post Bureau issued the Special Governance Plan for Excessive and Arbitrary Packaging of Mail and Express Items. Thanks to multi-party efforts, green development awareness in the express sector has gradually strengthened. An official said the goal is to achieve 90% of e-commerce express items no longer secondarily packaged by the end of this year.

The latest State Post Bureau data show that, based on May parcel sampling, mail and express items using recyclable packaging reached 380 million, while corrugated cartons recovered and reused in good condition reached 350 million. In March this year, the State Post Bureau issued the Implementation Opinions on Promoting Green and Low-Carbon Development of the Postal and Express Delivery Industry, calling for faster construction of a mail and express packaging recycling system and advancing pilot large-scale application of recyclable express packaging supported by the National Development and Reform Commission.

Guan Aiguang, deputy director of the Market Regulation Department of the State Post Bureau:

Green governance of express packaging involves many stakeholders, a long chain and wide fields. Progress requires coordinated efforts across departments to form joint management; more tax and fee incentive and subsidy policies from the state to increase green express packaging supply; and stronger support from local governments to address high costs, difficult recovery and limited support for recyclable packaging.

Guan Aiguang said green packaging is a systematic project. With wide promotion of e-waybills, slimmer tape and lightweight boxes, China has basically entered the 2.0 era of packaging reduction. This phase requires a shift toward material and technological innovation, including new materials, new packaging containers and intelligent packing systems, coordinating reduction goals across the supply chain's upstream and downstream.

On the other hand, the end-of-logistics recyclable packaging market needs a technological breakthrough. Promoting recyclable packaging is an important part of the green postal strategy and a key means to explore green packaging transformation.

Guan Aiguang, deputy director of the Market Regulation Department of the State Post Bureau:

By year-end, achieve 90% of e-commerce express items no longer secondarily packaged, deepen the two special governance campaigns on excessive packaging and plastic pollution, bring mail and express items using recyclable express packaging to 1 billion, and recovered and reused corrugated cartons in good condition to 800 million.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-379379.html